There often seems to be a playfulness to wise people, as if either their equanimity has as its source this playfulness or the playfulness flows from the equanimity; and they can persuade other people who are in a state of agitation to calm down and manage a smile.

Edward Hoagland

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

Edward Hoagland

nature dog silly

Animals used to provide a lowlife way to kill and get away with it, as they do still, but, more intriguingly, for some people they are an aperture through which wounds drain. The scapegoat of olden times, driven off for the bystanders sins, has become a tender thing, a running injury. There, running away is me: hurt it and you are hurting me.

Edward Hoagland

hurt running animal

Many divorces are not really the result of irreparable injury but involve, instead, a desire on the part of the man or woman to shatter the setup, start out from scratch alone, and make life work for them all over again. They want the risk of disaster, want to touch bottom, see where bottom is, and, coming up, to breathe the air with relief and relish again.

Edward Hoagland

divorce men life

If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife. by Edward Hoagland

If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.

Edward Hoagland

knives sleep love

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

Edward Hoagland

health silence sleep

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

Edward Hoagland

track color snow

Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.

Edward Hoagland

days-off one-day parent

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly... by Edward Hoagland

There were periods during my childhood when I stammered so badly I couldn't talk at all.

Edward Hoagland

childhood periods

Suicidal thinking, if serious, can be a kind of death scare, comparable to suffering a heart attack or undergoing a cancer operation. One survives such a phase both warier and chastened. When-ten years ago-I emerged from a bad dip into suicidal speculation, I felt utterly exhausted and yet quite fearless of ordinary dangers, vastly afraid of myself but much less scared of extraneous eventualities.

Edward Hoagland

suicidal cancer heart

To relive the relationship between owner and slave we can consider how we treat our cars and dogs - a dog exercising a somewhat similar leverage on our mercies and an automobile being comparable in value to a slave in those days

Edward Hoagland

slave-owners dog exercise

Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.

Edward Hoagland

life funny country

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining.

Edward Hoagland

disappointment loss life

To live is to see, and traveling sometimes speeds up the process. by Edward Hoagland

To live is to see, and traveling sometimes speeds up the process.

Edward Hoagland

speed sometimes travel

The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.

Edward Hoagland

ocean order years

Land of opportunity, land for the huddled masses where would the opportunity have been without the genocide of those Old Guard, bristling Indian tribes?

Edward Hoagland

tribes land opportunity

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more ba... by Edward Hoagland

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

Edward Hoagland

texan chosen people

If human nature eventually is going to take the place of nature everywhere, those of us who have been naturalists will have to transpose the faith in nature which is inherent in the profession to a faith in man-if necessary, man alone in the world.

Edward Hoagland

human-nature men world

Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days. by Edward Hoagland

Our loneliness makes us avid column readers these days.

Edward Hoagland

columns avid loneliness

Summer is when we believe, all of a sudden, that if we just walked out the back door and kept on going long enough and far enough we would reach the Rocky Mountains.

Edward Hoagland

summer doors believe

A writer's work is to witness things. by Edward Hoagland

A writer's work is to witness things.

Edward Hoagland

witness