“I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully — and losing it — just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.”
To his young son from the Yosemite Valley on (28 August 1989)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)
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William James 246
American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842–1910Related quotes
“The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.”
Opening lines, Ch. 1, "The River Bank"
The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Context: The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 11 “Stowaway”
To troops who had abandoned their lines during the Battle of New Orleans (8 January 1815).
1810s
Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 4.
Hurry Home, Candy (1953)
Source: Mind of My Mind (1977), Chapter 2 (p. 288)
“But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.”
Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,
divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo
aequo animo; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi.
Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,
divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parvo
aequo animo; neque enim est umquam penuria parvi.
Book V, lines 1117–1119 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Source: Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato (1713), Line 21. Pope also uses the reference, "Like Cato, give his little Senate laws", in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), Prologue to Imitations of Horace.