
Reuters News Agency (October 10, 2005)
2007, 2008
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
Reuters News Agency (October 10, 2005)
2007, 2008
On his experience in solitary confinement in prison, in An Phoblacht/Republican News (1978), under the pseudonym "Marcella."
Other writings
Life and Habit http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lfhb10h.htm, ch. 5 (1877)
Context: "Words, words, words," he writes, "are the stumbling-blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of things as they are, and not of the words that misrepresent them, you cannot think rightly. Words produce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there are none. Words divide; thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only differentiations of the same thing. To think of a thing they must be got rid of: they are the clothes that thoughts wear—only the clothes. I say this over and over again, for there is nothing of more importance. Other men's words will stop you at the beginning of an investigation. A man may play with words all his life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes. If I could think to you without words you would understand me better."
“Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.”
“She reads a lot of books. Good things, books.”
“His clothes are dirty, but his hands are clean, and you're the best thing that he's ever seen.”
Song lyrics, Nashville Skyline (1969), Lay Lady Lay
“I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff”
Context: I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff... Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty].
Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 160.