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The collection / 411 fragments

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411 results · Page 11 of 18Play this collection ▷
03c. 1966 AD
Sometimes the man who looks happiest in town, with the biggest smile, is the one carrying the biggest load of sin. There are smiles & smiles; learn to tell the dark variety from the light. The seal-barker, the laugh-shouter, half the time he's covering up. He's had his fun & he's guilty. And all men do love sin, Will, oh how they love it, never doubt, in all shapes, sizes, colors & smells. Times come when troughs, not tables, suit appetites. Hear a man too loudly praising others & look to wonder if he didn't just get up from the sty. On the other hand, that unhappy, pale, put-upon man walking by, who looks all guilt & sin, why, often that's your good man with a capital G, Will. For being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it & sometimes break in two. I've known a few. You work twice as hard to be a farmer as to be his hog. I suppose it's thinking about trying to be good makes the crack run up the wall one night. A man with high standards, too, the least hair falls on him sometimes wilts his spine. He can't let himself alone, won't let himself off the hook if he falls just a breath from grace.
Ray Bradbury / quote
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19c. 1966 AD
She was a woman with a broom or a dust-pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You sawher cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or yousaw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringerto their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as avacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. Shemade mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolledbut twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowersraised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in anight, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,to set their frames straight.
Ray Bradbury / quote
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20c. 1966 AD
Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don’t know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can’t act if you don’t know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff.
Ray Bradbury / quote
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22c. 1966 AD
He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn't feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green, full of tall, lush oaks and elms in summer; a creek ran through it, and the kids climbed around on its convolutions shouting, "This way, gang - we'll take a short-cut and head them off at Dead Man's Gulch!
Ray Bradbury / quote
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