Familiar

Famous quotes containing the word familiar:

    Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all, some villager’s familiar wood-lot, some widow’s thirds, from which her ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan, too, and old bound-marks may be found every forty rods, if you will search.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark:M”I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.”
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    in the brown baked features
    The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
    Both intimate and unidentifiable.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)