Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 28, 2007

Athens
177 The idea of the Athenian state was a union of individuals free to develop their own powers and live in their own way, obedient only to the laws they passed themselves and could criticize and change at will. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

191 He [Xenophon] was truly a man of his times, when poets and dramatists and historians were soldiers and generals and explorers. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

274 ...Delphi, the shrine of Apollo the most Greek of all the gods, the artist-god, the poet and musician, who ever brought fair order and harmony out of confusion, who stood for moderation and sobriety, upon whose temple was graven the great Delphic saying, ‘Nothing in excess.’ E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

xv …he [Euripides] lived in an age of startling discovery and invention and, in particular, an age of questioning during which all established notions of thought and behavior came in for examination and criticism. Warner, Euripides.

316 They [the Greeks] saw what is permanently important in man and unites him to the rest. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

26 To be merely an athlete is to be nearly a savage.... Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.

Attic
121 The attic was the attic of Victorian fiction…pleasant with beams of late light slanting in on piles and piles of magazines…and several dozen scrap books…and photograph books and albums and “baby books” and great envelopes of unfiled items. F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing.

Attitude
66 The day is always his, who works in it with serenity and great aims. Emerson, The American Scholar.

265 Erich Frank: “History and the world do not change, but man’s attitude to the world changes.” Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Author
1165 [Of Goethe]: …the poet of prose, and not of poetry. Emerson, Uncollected Prose.

Authority
426 Astonished at the greatness of an affair, I once learned from those who carried it out their motives and their management of it; I found nothing in them but very commonplace ideas. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

722 Some of the animals were drowned, some, too, of the men; the rest struggled to swim on and reach the opposite bank; and though there was a ford only about a quarter of a mile away they were proud to be swimming and drowning in the river under the eyes of the man [the emperor Napoleon] who sat on the log and was not even looking at what they were doing…occasionally casting a glance of displeasure at the drowning Uhlans who distracted his thoughts. Tolstoi, War and Peace.

Automation
822 Machinery has been applied to all work, and carried to such perfection, that little is left for the men but to mind the engines and feed the furnaces. Emerson, English Traits.

Autumn
84 Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn…. Austen, Persuasion.
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85 The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by—unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together…. Austen, Persuasion.
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100 Autumn: …doesn't the sun seem a bit thin in the afternoon compared even to last week? Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

Axiom
275 Lincoln: “Let us have faith that right makes might….” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 27, 2007

Art (Continued)
203 …the spiritual life of Holland needed [Rembrandt] and so had, to some extent, created him. Clark, Civilization.

213 …any attempt to relate art to society soon gets one into a false position…one must not pretend that social conditions produce works of art. Clark, Civilization.

340 The relationship between art and society is not at all simple and predictable. Clark, Civilization.

273 There is communication [in a work of art], or the work is a failure, but the communication releases our own visions, touches some highly personal chord in our own experience. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

273 Artistic creation, on the other hand, is unique...is not cumulative Eiseley, The Star Thrower

120 To certain artists, the law of reversible statement pertains: almost anything you say about them can be turned around to show that the opposite is true. Calvin Tomkins, “The Changing Picture: A Retrospective Reveals Jasper Johns.” NYER, Nov. 11, 1996.

123 In all the years that I have been looking at Johns’s work, I have never come close to understanding it, and I have never not been fascinated…. Calvin Tomkins, “The Changing Picture: A Retrospective Reveals Jasper Johns.” NYER, Nov. 11, 1996.

225 Art, like most things, is more enjoyable when you know something about it. Gates, The Road Ahead.

974 “ 'What would be done with this water-power,' [of the fountain] suggested an artist, 'if we had it in one of our American cities…employ it to turn the machinery of a cotton mill, I wonder.' ” Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

241 W.L .Laurence: It is not generally recognized that a concept in higher mathematics can be, and is, to those who understand it, as aesthetically satisfying, and as capable of producing an overwhelming emotional experience, as any musical composition, painting, drama, or any other form of creative expression. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Atheism
587 As soon as men have all of them denied God—and I believe that period, analogous with geological periods, will come to pass—the old conception of the universe will fall of itself…and what’s more the old morality, and everything will begin anew; men will unite to take from life all it can give, but only for joy and happiness in the present world…from hour to hour extending his conquest of nature infinitely by his will and his science, men will feel such lofty joy from hour to hour in doing it that it will make up for all his old dreams of the joys of heaven; everyone will know that he is mortal and will accept death proudly and serenely like a god. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 26, 2007

Art (Continued)
898 Thus, she [Hilda] viewed it [the painting], as it were, with his [the artist’s] own eyes, and hence her comprehension of any picture that interested her was perfect. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

901 ...lowering the standards of art to the comprehension of the spectator. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

956 I fancy it is still the ordinary habit with sculptors, first to finish their group of statuary…and then to choose the subject. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

963 They [artists] linger year after year in Italy; while their originality dies out of them…. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

967 There is an effluence of divinity in the first sketch; and there, if anywhere, you find the pure light of inspiration, which the subsequent toil of the artist serves to bring out in stronger luster, indeed, but likewise adulterates it with what belongs to an inferior mood. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

968 The charm [of the designs] lay partly in their very imperfection; for this is suggestive and sets the imagination at work; whereas, the finished picture, if a good one, leaves the spectator nothing to do…. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

980 Byron’s celebrated description [of the Coliseum] is better than reality. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1130 There is always the necessity of helping out the painter’s art with your own resources of sensibility and imagination. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1133 She began to suspect that some, at least, of her venerated painters, had left an inevitable hollowness in their works, because…they essayed to express to the world what they had not in their own souls. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1135 …her perceptive faculty penetrated the canvas like a steel probe, and found but a crust of paint over an emptiness. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

1168 Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed…highest merit is suggestiveness. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

573 Clifford…caught the color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly than he received it…. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables.

136 ...an artist to whom beauty brings exaltation and serenity of spirit. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

104 Only the poets, musicians, and saints have given us mirrors of the unfathomable. Bergman, Ignmar. Fiction: “Confession.” The New Yorker (Nov. 11, 1996), 92-104.

5 Aristotle says that when an art form reaches its proper development it remains fixed. Hadas, ed., The Complete Works of Aristophanes.

218 They [members of the Royal Society] recognized that all these were fancies, that reality lay elsewhere, in the realm of measurement and observation…so began that division between scientific truth and the imagination which was to…give a feeling of artificiality to all poetry during the next hundred years. Clark, Civilization.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 25, 2007

Art (Continued)
73 …the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

74 The noblest art appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

74 "The function of art is catharsis, purification: emotions accumulated in us under the pressure of social restraints, and liable to sudden issue in unsocial and destructive action, are touched off and sluiced away in the harmless form of theatrical excitement; so tragedy, "through pity and fear, effects the proper purgation of these emotions." Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

221 Voltaire: Take away the arts and the progress of the mind, and you will find nothing in any age remarkable enough to attract the attention of posterity. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire.

326 Schopenhauer : A work of art is successful…in proportion as it suggests the Platonic Idea, or universal, of the group to which the represented object belongs. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

337 Schopenhauer : This power of the arts to elevate us above the strife of wills…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.

118 Joyce Carol Oates: Art...a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

64 It may be, indeed, that the artistic impulse is simply a kind of disgust with things as they are. Mencken, Minority Report.

188 Artists can seldom account for their own work…. Mencken, Minority Report.

124 Faulkner: Art has no concern with peace and contentment. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

149 Simenon: …a work of art can’t be done for the purpose of pleasing a certain group of readers. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

12 Ira Wolfert: Art has been called a process of withholding…. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

33 Ann Petry: The novel, like all other forms of art, will always reflect the political, economic, and social structure of the period in which it was created. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

337 Dr. Beatrice Hinkle: For the artist most definitely lives in two worlds, the world of objective reality being colored and shadowed by the subjective world of the ideal and of fantasy, the latter…made real to him through his capacity for arresting it and fixing it in form. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

1004 Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider and should…not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Wealth.

641 Every great artist has been such by synthesis. Emerson, Representative Men: Plato, or The Philosopher.

14 The eye is the best of artists. Emerson, Nature.

244 A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree.... Emerson, History.

24 Cervantes: “When a poet is poor, half of his divine fruits and fancies miscarry by reasons of his anxious cares to win his daily bread.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Introduction by Walter Starkie.

200 It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not able to feel that it is fine. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

36 Guillermo Cabrera Infante: These men [Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Camus] are heroes because they fight swords with words—but that doesn’t make them artists. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

44 John Updike: …the artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and…he does it without destroying something else. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

297 W.H. Auden: …I have come to realize that, in cases of social or political injustice, only two things are effective: political action and straight journalist reportage of the facts. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

297 W.H. Auden: The social and political history of Europe would be what it has been if Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Mozart et al. had never lived. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

885 But we make very pretty pictures, sometimes, with our artfully arranged lights and shadows. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 24, 2007

Art (Continued)
843 JFK: …in [a democratic society] the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

433 In general his respect for artistic excellence exceeded his appreciation. Sorenson, Kennedy

87 The great naturalist Loren Eiseley once said that what characterizes great art is that it so renders an idea, an object, or an emotion that it is impossible to encounter it again without thinking of the artist’s conception of it. Marek, R. Gross, ed. Editors on Editing.

582 Freud: I let them express their own peculiar content in the form of writing, painting, drawing…this way they find their own symbolic expression and portray clearly their own pathology. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

8 The wanderers had never been without craftsmen; and their pent-up need to give some permanent shape to the flux of experience, to make something perfect in their singularly imperfect existence.... Clark, Civilization.

50 The Abbot Suger of St. Denis...argued that we could only come to understand absolute beauty, which is God, through the effect of precious and beautiful things on our senses...” the dull mind rises to truth through that which is material”... has remained the basis of our belief in the value of art today. Clark, Civilization.

55 [Of the main portal at Chartres]: ...the longer you look at it, the more moving incidents, the more vivid details you discover. Clark, Civilization.

104 Realistic portraiture, the use of the accidents of each individual face to reveal inner life...was invented in Flanders, and came to immediate perfection in the work of Jan Van Eyck. Clark, Civilization.

131 Like all great artists he [Raphael] was a borrower and he absorbed his borrowings more than most. Clark, Civilization.

191 Of course, all art is to some extent illusion…transforms experience in order to satisfy some need…. Clark, Civilization.

212 …Dutch delight in material objects that produced their school of still-life painters, and often achieves what I can only call a spiritualization of matter…the joy that we feel when we look at the pewter jugs and white pots in Vermeer’s pictures…. Clark, Civilization.

216 Sir Christopher Wren…the thirty new city churches each…the solution of a different problem. Clark, Civilization.

218 Sprat’s History of the Royal Society: Indeed all products of the imagination are dangerous falsities and even ornaments of speech are a form of deceit. Clark, Civilization.

226 [Bach’s] …universal genius rose out of the high plateau of competitive musical life in the Protestant cities of northern Germany. Clark, Civilization.

237 Pater said that all art aspired to the condition of music. Clark, Civilization.

73 Artistic creation, says Aristotle, springs from…the craving for emotional expression. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 23, 2007

Aristocracy
75 [Aristocracy justified]: The proper leaders of the world, the only ones who could be trusted to guide it disinterestedly, were a class from generation to generation raised above the common level, not by self-seeking ambition, but by birth; a class which a great tradition and a careful training made superior to the selfish greed and the servile meanness other men were subject to. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

76 [Aristocracy]: ...authority in the hands of the disciplined best. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

Aristotle
55 [At the time of Aristotle] the attractive force of matter, the law of gravitation, electrical phenomena, the conditions of chemical combination, pressure of air and its effects, the nature of light, heat, combustion, etc., in short, all the facts on which the physical theories of modern science are based were…almost wholly undiscovered. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

Art
42 Art is to us of the West the unifier of what is without and what is within. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

236 …looking is in itself the business of art. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

274 The artist...touches the hidden strings of pity...searches our hearts...makes us sensitive to beauty...asks questions about fate and destiny. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

279 ...by the aid of the artistic imagination, those humane insights and understandings which alone can...enable us to shape ourselves, rather than the stone, into the forms which great art has anticipated. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

671 [Kennedy] saw the arts not as a distraction in the life of a nation but as something close to the heart of a nation’s purpose. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

672 Kennedy rehabilitated the Presidential Medal of Freedom in an effort to honor those “whose talent enlarges the public vision of the dignity with which life can be graced and the fullness with which it can be lived.” Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

673 JFK: “In the eyes of posterity, the success of the United States as a civilized society will be largely judged by the creative activities of its citizens in art, architecture, literature, music and the sciences”: Commission on National Goals for President Eisenhower. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

843 JFK: …art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

36 Guillermo Cabrera Infante: Any literary work that aspires to the condition of art must forget politics, religion, and, ultimately, morals; otherwise it will be a pamphlet, a sermon, or a morality play. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

33 Ann Petry: The argument [in support of art for art’s sake] runs something like this: the novel is an art form; art (any and all art) is prostituted, bastardized, when it is used to serve some moral or political end for it then becomes propaganda. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 22, 2007

Anti-Semitism
389 And, finally, because anti-Semitism was part of the Catholic tradition, the Church failed to take a principled position on National Socialist Jewish policy.... Bracher, The German Dictatorship

Argument
388 Schlesinger...the argument should be carried by facts not by exhortations. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

136 An argument not waged is a war won. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

161 …that is more clever than correct. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

232 You must demonstrate a case…but don’t do it combatively, to prove yourself right and Meynert wrong. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

339 …the adversary who fights you the hardest is the one who is the most convinced you are right. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

558 Boswell on Johnson’s power of argument: …he has no formal preparation, no flourishing with his sword; he is through your body in an instant. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.

416 We learn to argue only that we may contradict; and with everyone contradicting and being contradicted, it turns out that the fruit of arguing is to destroy and nullify truth. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

416 They lose track of the main issue and push it aside in the pack of incidental points. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

417 After an hour of tempest they don’t know what they are looking for;. one catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer aware of what is said in opposition to him, so involved is he in his own course, and he is thinking of following himself, not you…another…mixes up and confuses the issue…[another] makes use only of the advantage of his voice and lungs…and another…deafens you with useless preambles and digressions. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

417 Is there any more of a muddle in the cackle of fishwives than in the public debates of men whose profession is logic? Montaigne, Selected Essays.

521 Cicero: Let him make use of passion who cannot make use of reason. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

223 The Amboy Times: “He attacks no man’s character or motives, but fights with arguments.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

487 A cheerleader [Streicher] never carries the ball nor calls a play, yet by his continual goading of the crowd to frenzied excitement he is a personality in his team’s success. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

513 …like the member of a robber band trying to beg off because he himself has not killed or anticipated that the end result would be murder—he is a criminal nonetheless. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

514 …reminiscent of a man who knows that he is living with a murderer, but is careful not to descend into the cellar, where the bodies are being buried. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

65 It was the habit of our philosopher [Aristotle] to preface his works with historical sketches of previous contributions to the subject in hand, and to add to every contribution an annihilating refutation. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

203 His [Voltaire’s] later educators, the Jesuits, gave him the very instrument of skepticism by teaching him dialectic—the art of proving anything, and therefore at last the habit of believing nothing. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 21, 2007

Anecdotes
609 …the President used stories as a laugh cure for a drooping friend or for his own melancholy, yet also to clinch an argument, to lay bare a fallacy, to disarm an antagonist…. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

Angels and Saints
1110 His [Fra Angelico’s] angels look as if they had never taken a flight out of heaven; and his Saints seem to have been born saints, and always to have lived so. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Anger
29 John Hersey: Humorless anger is dead anger…. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

516 Not only does anger cause confusion…this fire benumbs and consumes…strength. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

155 Achilles: …let strife and rancor/ perish from the lives of gods and men,/ with anger that envenoms even the wise/ and is far sweeter than slow-dripping honey,/ clouding the hearts of men like smoke. Homer, Iliad.

137 Antigone: …realize how catastrophic anger brings catastrophe. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

Animals
25 In a world older and more complete than ours they [animals] move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. Henry Beston, The Outermost House.
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25 [Animals] are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travails of the earth. Henry Beston, The Outermost House.
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50 The survivors of the winter passed over the disintegrating cardinal…no function of memory or instinct recalled his life. Russell, Watchers at the Pond.

95 The hunters could easily misjudge the dynamic instinct to live of their defenseless prey.
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11 Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.
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49 Albert Schweitzer: Precisely because the animal has, by serving in the realm of experimentation, made it possible for such precious information to be obtained for suffering humanity--but at the cost of its pain--a new bond of solidarity has been created between the animal and us. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

174 Albert Schweitzer: Has any man so far been able to create a fly? Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

114 The worm gulped down the rotifer, and the frog swallowed the worm; the kingfisher killed the frog, and the hunt passed endlessly from creature to creature. Russell, Watchers at the Pond.

14 Herring and other fish in schools are at times so closely integrated, their actions so coordinated, that they seem to be functionally a great multi-fish organism. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

174 Albert Schweitzer: The poor fly...knows anxiety, it knows hope for happiness, it knows fear of not existing any more. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

Perspectives on Ideas February 15a, 2007

Introduction
Over the years, I have read many books. I have underlined interesting ideas in those books. Lately, I have gathered some of those ideas according to topic. Today, I am beginning a “blog” in which I will publish my collection of “significant sentences.” I call this collection of ideas, “Perspectives on Ideas.”

Raymond Stopper
February 15, 2007.

Achievement
761 …the disadvantages of any epoch exist only to the faint-hearted. Emerson, Representative Men, Goethe, or the Writer.
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21 Thomas Mann: …almost everything conspicuously great is great in despite: has come into being in defiance of affliction and pain, poverty, destitution, bodily weakness, vice, passion, and a thousand other obstructions. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.
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509 “Your life has so conditioned you that you can function only in the achieving and are unfitted for the achievement.” Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Acrophobia
994 Yet he seemed to feel that perilous fascination which haunts the brow of precipices, tempting the unwary one to fling himself over, for the very horror of the thing. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Action
Action is a unifier. Hoffer, The True Believer

Administrators
1052 In quiet, untroubled times every administrator believes that it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his charge is kept going: and in this consciousness of being indispensable lies the chief reward of his pains and exertions. Tolstoi, War and Peace.
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119 To Sigmund it seemed tragic that he no longer searched out scientific problems but was content to keep down the costs of his department and considered balancing the budget an act of faith. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

Adults
215 [Grown-up people] have eaten the apple and know good and evil, and…they go on eating it still. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Adversity
1087 Bad times have a scientific value…occasions a good learner would not miss. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Considerations by the Way.

Advertising
19 Advertisers had long maintained that they exposed demands rather than creating them. Blum, V Was for Victory

19 [Advertisers] traded upon basic human desires, upon appeals to sex, envy, anxiety, and they related the satisfaction of those desires to the acquisition of commercial artifacts. Blum, V Was for Victory

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 20, 2007

Analogy
624 Khrushchev: The U.S.-U.S.S.R. deadlock on Berlin…he compared to two stupid and stubborn goats head to head on a narrow bridge across an abyss, neither giving way and both falling to their doom. Sorenson, Kennedy

624 Khrushchev: DeGaulle’s influence over Adenauer was compared to the Russian peasant who caught a bear barehanded but could neither bring it back nor make the bear let loose of him. Sorenson, Kennedy

11 The canisters were almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as a miser might turn if anyone attempted to assist him in counting his gold. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

95 Catherine: …he’s [Heathcliff] more myself than I am; whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

320 Catherine’s face was just like the landscape—shadows and sunshine flitting over it in rapid succession; but the shadows rested longer, and the sunshine was more transient…. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

332 Heathcliff: I’d rather be hugged by a snake. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

88 The universe is, therefore, not static; it is expanding in somewhat the same manner as a soap bubble or a balloon expands. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein

17 The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. Nabokov, Lolita.

487 …the illiterate peasant at the optician’s who tried glass after eyeglass and still was not able to read. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

127 Lincoln: Your question reminds me of an incident which occurred out west: Two roughs were playing cards for high stakes, when one of them, suspecting his adversary of foul play, straightway drew his bowie-knife from his belt and pinned the hand of the other player upon the table, exclaiming: ‘If you haven’t got the ace of spades under your palm, I’ll apologize.’ Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

136 Wendell Phillips held that Lincoln was honest but ‘as a pint-pot may be full, and yet not be so full as a quart, so there is a vast difference between the honesty of a small man and the honesty of a statesman.’ Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

345 A report having much useless language lay on his [Lincoln’s] desk, the work of a Congressional committee… “I should want a new lease of life to read this through…if I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect him to tell me that horse’s points—not how many hairs he has in his tail.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

584 Lincoln: The pilots on our western rivers steer from point to point, as they call it—setting the course of the boat no farther than they can see…all I propose to do in the great problems that are set before us. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

835 Lincoln: When you have an elephant by the hind leg, and he’s trying to run away, it’s best to let him run. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

875 “A tree is best measured when it’s down.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

92 …Alsop, who said it reminded him of the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland teaching herself to believe six impossible things before breakfast. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

471 Jackson: They were in the position of the fictional boy who murdered his father and mother and then pleaded leniency because he was an orphan. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

481 …the Soviets, whose behavior made the Sphinx seem scrutable. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

512 Ribbentrop’s secretary: Everything looks amazing, but it is like an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over the administration, and have made the sensible people inmates. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg.

1063 Like the monkey which slips its paw into the narrow neck of a pitcher to grasp a handful of nuts and will not open its fist for fear of losing its plunder, and is thereby the undoing of itself…. Tolstoi, War and Peace

1343 But the sheep need only rid themselves of the idea that all that is done to them is done solely for the furtherance of their sheepish ends. Tolstoi, War and Peace

55 But Briton is the parent country, say some…the more shame upon her conduct…[because] even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

238 Lincoln: The argument had got down as thin as “soup made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

122 Tell her that Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation: an arid wilderness of furze and rhinstone [hard, dark-colored rocks like basalt]…as soon put that little canary, into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.

74 Spotted hyenas are the sharks of the Savanna…. Joanna Greenfield, “Personal History: Hyena.” The New Yorker, November 1996.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 19, 2007

America
357 They [the colonists] did not think of men marching off to battle, but of a man standing, gun in hand, beside his neighbors to fend off the enemy attacking his village. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

362 In place of the European concept of wars undertaken to serve the half-secret needs of dynasty, commerce, or empire, there had grown here a notion of war as the urgent and temporary defense of the homeland. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

368 Short-term enlistments (sometimes for as little as three months) expressed both the widespread fear of a professional standing army and the assumption that an army would be superfluous the day after the war was won. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

371 The American ideal was not Caesar but Cincinnatus, not the skilled general glorying in the tasks of warfare to which he gave his life, but the planter who had unwillingly left his tobacco fields. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

351 The myth of the omnipresent American marksman, clothed not in a military uniform but in a hunting shirt, became potent in psychological warfare. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

57 I asked them who their favorite president was…Harry Truman…Why?… “because he was one of the people, and when he spoke we could understand him…because someone is president doesn’t make him better than me.” Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

335 “Little boxes on the hillside,/ Little boxes made of ticky tacky,/ Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same;/ There’s a green one and a pink one/ and a blue one and a yellow one/ And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.” [Blum, V Was for Victory

337 “And the people in the houses/ All went to the university,/ Where they were put in boxes/ and they all came out the same;/ And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers / and business executives,/ And they’re all made out of ticky tacky/ And they all look just the same.” [Malvina Reynolds: “Little Boxes and other Handmade Songs.”] Blum, V Was for Victory
xiii ...more people struggle to make ends meet and frantically search for meaning beyond their individual lives. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

xiii Though there are still extraordinary individuals in communities across America, too many of us are losing a conception of the whole, and of our connectedness to one another. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

206 …we are a people of the present and have no heartfelt interest in the olden time. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches

125 Scratch [the average American] and you will find a Puritan. Mencken, Minority Report.

119 Richard Summers: We [Americans] are an idealistic people. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

146 The Americans have many virtues, but they have not faith and hope. Emerson, Man the Reformer.

288 Just as Daniel Boone needed elbow room and got it by moving on to a new frontier, so many Americans of the late twentieth century, buffeted by assorted alarms, schedules, and growing pressures to make a living, need time to themselves—time away from the exigencies of every day…read a book…walk in the woods…reflect on your dreams…gather your thoughts…keep a diary—these are the modern equivalents of Boone’s quest. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

943 …and Rome is not like one of our New England villages, where we need the permission of each individual neighbor for every act that we do, every word that we utter, and every friend that we make or keep. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

215 My impression of the land west of Missouri had been shaped by the movies and popular literature of my childhood—the conflict between cowboys and Indians, farmers and ranchers. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

229 Artist Charles Marion Russell, Great Falls, Montana, 1923: “In my book, a pioneer is a man who turned all the grass upside down, strung bob-wire over the dust that was left, poisoned the water and cut down the trees, killed the Indians who owned the land and called it progress [and] if I had my way, the land would be like God made it and none of you sons of bitches would be here at all.” Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 18, 2007

America
62 O receive the fugitive [freedom], and prepare in time an asylum for mankind. Paine, Common Sense, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

69 …a period may arrive, when (both countries being prepared for it) some terrible disaster, some dreadful convulsion in Great Britain, may transfer the seat of empire to this western hemisphere—where the British constitution…shall rise with youthful vigor and shine with redoubled splendor. Charles Inglis, The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

916 …England, an old and exhausted land, must one day be contented, like other parents, to be strong only in her children. Emerson, English Traits.

378 Transformation means winning over all segments of urban life to a new politics of common effort. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

12 Was he thinking of the Kentucky father whose two sons died in battle, one in Union blue, the other in Confederate gray, the father inscribing over their double grave, “God knows which was right.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.

30 Balding and shrunken, he [his father Clyde] now represented the antithesis of the American dream, a second-generation son who failed to rise above the foothold left him by his self-made father. Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley

29 Surely, this was the best of all possible systems of life, where one simply chose the thing he most wanted to do, and, because he loved it, worked as hard as he could, and, because he worked hard, steadily rose from position to position, until he had “arrived,” when the world would hold no more secrets or problems, and life gracefully leveled out on a plane of confidence, security and happiness. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

295 Confronting the dark pages of our history is essential to getting beyond them. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

383 …American history, with its tensions between liberty and obligation, freedom and order, exclusion and participation, the dominant culture and the countless subcultures, the individual and the community. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

21 …we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever—except that of taking money out of their pockets without their consent. William Pitt, Speech on the Stamp Act. 1766. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

35 After many more centuries shall have rolled away, long after we, who are now bustling upon the stage of life, shall have been received to the bosom of mother earth, and our names are forgotten, the Colonies may be so far increased as to have the balance of wealth, numbers and power in their favor, the good of the empire make it necessary to fix the seat of government here; and some future George…may cross the Atlantic and rule Great Britain by an American Parliament. Daniel Leonard, Massachusettensis, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

70 Thomas Jefferson: Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures [of slavery in the original Declaration of Independence], for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

58 To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which, when obtained, requires five or six more to explain it in…. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

301 What is particularly striking about the interaction of Americans with our indigenous peoples is how little we know about them…challenge is to see the Indians on their own terms and from the perspective of their own cultures, instead of simply looking for ways to fit them into the dominant white culture. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

316 By learning more about Native American peoples, we learn more about ourselves. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

353 The story of the military institutions of the American colonies is an account of efforts to keep as much of the free population as possible armed and prepared to fight on short notice. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 17, 2007

America
23 Achieving personal excellence and extending a helping hand are indispensable elements of an American future that works.... Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

318 The [American] creed’s touchstones are liberty, equality, individualism, democracy, and the rule of law. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

353 Accentuating difference tends to make us forget our common humanity, yet it is this individuality that shapes a person’s identity…the guiding paradox of America. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

415 Optimism is one of our [Americans’] great virtues. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

487 There are...two Americas, of which one is European...chiefly the eastern states, where the older stocks look up respectfully to foreign aristocracies, and more recent immigrants look back with a certain nostalgia to the culture and traditions of their native lands. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

487 [In the Eastern states]...British mood dominates the literature...our standard of art and taste in the Atlantic states is English; our literary heritage is English; and our philosophy, when we have time for any...produced Washington Irving and Emerson and even Poe. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

487 Santayana: America is not simply a young country with an old mentality; it is a country with two mentalities, one a survival of the beliefs and standards of the fathers, the other an expression of the instincts, practices and discoveries of the younger generations. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

488 Santayana: The American will inhabits the skyscraper; the American intellect inhabits the Colonial mansion. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

488 The other America...is the America that produced Lincoln, Thoreau, Whitman and Twain; it is the America of “horse sense,” of “practical men,” of “hard headed business men.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

488 The other America...consists of those people, whether Yankees or Hoosiers or cowboys, whose roots are in this soil, and not in Europe.... Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.

283 According to American theory, all power is in the hands of the plain people, and according to American legend they always exercise it wisely…in fact [the plain people] can only exert their power through agents, and in the election of these agents they seldom face a clear choice between a good candidate and a bad one, or a wise idea and a foolish one. Mencken, Minority Report.

189 RP Warren paraphrasing Polish writer Adam Gurowski: …begins by saying that America is unique among nations because other nations are accidents of geography or race, but America is based on an idea. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

849 Strange, that the solid truth-speaking Briton should derive from an imposter [St. George]; strange, that the New World should have no better luck—that broad America must wear the name of a thief,…Amerigo Vespucci, the pickle dealer at Seville, who went out, in 1499, a subaltern with Hojeda, and whose highest naval rank was boatswain’s mate in an expedition that never sailed, managed in this lying world to supplant Columbus and baptize half the earth with his own dishonest name. Emerson, English Traits.

123 Nine years earlier Denis Brogan had written: “Probably the only people who have the historical sense of inevitable victory are the Americans.” Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

276 Philip Larkin: A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast: The rest is a desert full of bigots. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook.

xix …but no other great power has the confidence and stability to expose and face its own blunders. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

189 I learned to understand a fundamental suspicion in the American character…. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

378 …in the American tradition to be guilty of incompetence is the one unbearable disgrace. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

7 Samuel Johnson: “The Americans are a nation of convicts and deserve anything we give them short of hanging.” Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas February 16, 2007

Ambition
185 Leader: Let Ambition touch his wings on many flowers;/ Blessed to one he comes—as hope;/ All ruin to another/ Lured to fly too high,/ His life too late hot ashes now beneath his feet. Sophocles. Antigone.

467 It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches

116 F. Bacon: He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.

143 F. Bacon: Men in great place are thrice servants; servants to the sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business, so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons nor in their action, nor in their time...the rising unto place is laborious, and by pains, men come to greater pains...the standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.

579 There is also the story they tell of the shepherd who set fire and burned down the celebrated Temple of Diana, considered one of the Seven Wonders of the world, simply in order that his name might be remembered for centuries to come; although it was forbidden to speak of him, or even to mention his name by word of mouth or in writing, so that his ambition might not be fulfilled, it is nevertheless known that he was called Erostratus. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.

910 Sancho on ambition: ...never stretch your feet beyond the sheet. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.

140 For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little [and] the story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be picked by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

America
141 The hardening pattern of bigness in American life.... Blum, V Was for Victory

14 Kennedy: “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.” Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

64 JFK: “Too many Americans have lost their way, their will, and their sense of historic purpose.” Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

64 JFK: The new frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises--it is a set of challenges. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

66 The message of Kennedy’s 1960 campaign had been that the American way of life was in terrible shape, that our economy was slowing down, that we were neglectful of our young and our old, callous toward our poor and our minorities, that our cities and schools and landscapes were a mess, that our motives were materialistic and ignoble and that we were fast becoming a country without purpose and ideals. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

88 Kennedy: The nation…was founded ‘on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.’ Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

151 American life is so damned dumb and stupid and healthy. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

430 JFK: “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.” Sorenson, Kennedy

436 JFK: “I am certain that, after the dust of centuries has passed over our cities, we will be remembered not for victories or defeats in battle or in politics but for our contributions to the human spirit.” Sorenson, Kennedy

439 [Kennedy] was wise enough to know that in a nation of consent, not command, Presidential words alone cannot always produce results. Sorenson, Kennedy

561 The President wanted not only a bill which dealt effectively with the problem of discrimination in voting, public accommodations, educational and other public institutions, federal programs and employment, but also a bill which reflected a bipartisan approach and a national consensus which the nation would accept and obey. Sorenson, Kennedy

575 JFK: “We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient…that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94% of mankind—that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity—and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.” Sorenson, Kennedy

607 [Kennedy]…believed that the most relevant contributions from his own country’s experience were not its concepts of private property or political parties but its traditions of human dignity and liberty. Sorenson, Kennedy

338 At their best…popular psychology and self-help books are part of the huge democratization of knowledge…also seem to me distinctively American—a reminder of our old faith in self-improvement, self-reliance, and human perfectibility, married to the can-do temperament of management: just find the right technique, and you can make life work for you. Burbank, T. Gross, ed. Editors on Editing.

00 Gov. Wm. Bradford: …they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor…if they looked behind them there was the mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil parts of the world. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

185 While European culture had developed elaborate ways of fragmenting, specializing, and monopolizing pieces of man’s knowledge and functions, American culture from its very beginning allowed many of these to come together. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

189 William Byrd: “It was a place free from those three great scourges of mankind, priests, lawyers, and physicians.” Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience

669 About New York City: …looking at the faces of the people rushing by, in a hurry to return to their families and sit down to their suppers; no leisurely pace, but an onslaught against time, as though more than enough of the day had been given to work, and now one wanted to return to the security of home. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

690 Mitya: And though they [Americans] may be wonderful at machinery, every one of them, damn them, they are not of my soul…I love Russia…. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

597 Lincoln: I am a living witness that any of your children may look to come here [the White House as President] as my father’s child has. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

723 America: A mystic dream of a majestic republic holding to human freedom and equal opportunity ran parallel to motives of hard cash and pay dirt. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas

Advice
213 Merlyn: Asking advice is a fatal thing. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

625 Ideal advice, which nobody was built to follow, was no advice at all. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

625 Advising heaven to earth was useless. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

261 [On asking advice]: “If thee asks ten people what to do, they will tell thee ten things, and then thee doesn’t know as much as when thee set out.” Jewett, A Country Doctor.

Affluence
30 ...Stevenson’s conviction that affluence was not enough for the good life. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Age
137 Chorus: Where is the man who wants/ More length of days/ O cry it out: / There is a fool. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

138 Chorus: His dawdling years/ Are loaded down with cares/ His joys are flown/ His extra time but trickles on/ He waits the Comforter/ Who comes to all. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

138 Chorus: Vexations crowd without/ And worries crowd within. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

210 Leader: But high and mighty words and ways/ Are flogged to humbleness, till age,/ Beaten to its knees, at last is wise. Sophocles, Antigone.

416 Hawthorne, seeing his former classmates at a reunion in old age: “All my contemporaries have grown the funniest old men in the world.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

225 A playfulness has revisited my mind; a sympathy with the young and gay; an unpainful interest in the business of others; a light and wandering curiosity; arising, perhaps, from the sense that my toil on earth is ended, and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches

352 At twenty-two, the age of thirty seems to be the verge of senility. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Age 140 Faulkner: the world’s anguish is caused by people between twenty and forty. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

297 “And now, through the crevice of the curtain, I saw my little Una of the golden locks, looking very beautiful; and so full of spirit and life, that she was life itself…and then I looked at my poor dying mother; and seemed to see the whole of human existence at once.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

126 Creon: Rage, remember, knows no age till death. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

111 Oedipus: Son of Aegeus [Theseus], gentle son, only to the gods is given not to age or die/All else disrupts through all-disposing Time./ Earth ebbs in strength. The body ebbs in power./ Faith dies and faithlessness is born. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

Aggression
763 A Lenin adage said Bohlen in one of our first meetings [on the Cuban Missile Crisis] compares national expansion to a bayonet drive: if you strike steel, pull back; if you strike mush, keep going. Sorenson, Kennedy

Agitations
528 Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Agriculture
45 …an agricultural population is inclined to supernatural belief by its helpless dependence on the caprice of the elements, and by that inability to control nature which always leads to fear and thence to worship. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.

Alcoholism
133 Lincoln: In my judgment, such of us as have never fallen victims [to alcohol abuse] have been spared more from the absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Altruism
55 And if the patient whose wounds you are washing did not greet you with gratitude, but worried you with his whims, without valuing or remarking your charitable services, began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)…would you persevere in your love…? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

55 I expect payment at once—that is praise, and the repayment of love with love; otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

114 Actually, altruism simply does not exist on earth: even the most devoted nun, laboring all her life in the hospitals, is sustained by the promise of a stupendous reward…billions of centuries of indescribable bliss for a few years of unpleasant but certainly not unendurable drudgery and privation. Mencken, Minority Report.

55 The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

55 In my dreams…I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity…. and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with any one for two days together…as soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom…. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

196 The great thing now is to persuade him that he is on an equal footing with us, in spite of his taking money from us. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

434 Tacitus: Benefits are agreeable so long as they seem capable of being returned; but when they go much beyond that, they are repaid with hatred instead of thanks. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

468 As giving is an ambitious quality, mark of prerogative, so is accepting a quality of submission. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

392 Spencer: Altruistic actions, having become instinctive through their natural selection for social utility, will, like every instinctive operation, be performed without compulsion and with joy. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.

153 The truth is that in any conflict between altruistic purpose and private self-interest the latter always wins hands down. Mencken, Minority Report.