Penance Stare

Famous quotes containing the words penance and/or stare:

    I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways.... The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    —the children’s eyes
    In momentary wonder stare upon
    A sixty-year-old smiling public man.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)