Scarlet Letter

Famous quotes containing the words scarlet and/or letter:

    Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun-house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete, unless it have these trees to mark the season in it. They are important, like the town clock. A village that has them not will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose, an essential part is wanting.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    A letter with it
    discloses, in its words and between them,
    a life opening, fearful, fearless,
    thousand-eyed, a field
    of sparks that move swiftly
    in darkness....
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)