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)