Thursday, May 31, 2007

Perspective on Ideas. May 31, 2007. Greed. Greek Literature. Grief. Groups. Guilt.

Greed
Greed 177 On the United States’s reaching out for more territory, [Lincoln] quoted the farmer about land, “I ain’t greedy; I only want what jines mine.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Greek Literature
Greek Literature 111 Richard Goodwin: ...the Greek view where the hero must poise himself against the gods and, even with knowledge of the futility of the fight, press on to the end of his life until he meets his tragic fate. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days [Knowing the futility of fighting the gods, the Greek hero presses on until his tragic end.]


Grief
Grief 76 For himself [Mr. Earnshaw], he grew desperate: his sorrow was of that kind that will not lament; he neither wept nor prayed: he cursed and defied; execrated God and man…. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights. [He would not lament; he cursed and defied God and man.]

Groups
Groups 40 …a group survives in competition or conflict with another group, according to its unity and power, according to the ability of its members to cooperate for common ends. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [Groups succeed when their members cooperate for common ends.]

Guilt
Guilt 98 But concealment had imparted to a justifiable act, much of the secret effect of guilt; and Reuben, while reason told him he had done right, experienced, in no small degree, the mental horrors, which punish the perpetrator of undiscovered crime. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches [When he concealed his justifiable act, he felt the guilt of undiscovered crime.]

Guilt 450 …will guilty thoughts—of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows—will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence in the supreme court of eternity? Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches [Will guilty thoughts without accompanying deeds merit condemnation in eternity?]

Guilt 240 …looking at him, the survivor, and wondering, he always thought, why he had come back and their son or brother or husband had not. Childers, Wings of Morning. [The survivor’s guilt: why was he safe and not the others?]

Guilt 99 There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness. Hoffer, The True Believer [Behind self-righteousness is a sense of guilt.]

Guilt 461 Kafka seems to have understood that guilt, in Shakespeare...precedes all actual crimes. Bloom, Western Canon. [In Shakespeare, guilt precedes actual crimes.]

Guilt 1001 At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a common-place aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that, if suspected, would make them look monstrous in the general eye. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [The guilty pay extraordinary attention to their commonplace lives.]

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas, May 30, 2007. Grammar. Greatness.

Grammar
Grammar 68 At the same time, his [JFK’s] emphasis on a course of reason--rejecting the extremes of either side--helped produce the parallel construction and use of contrasts with which he later became identified. Sorenson, Kennedy [Grammar reinforces meaning.]

Grammar 313 Winston Churchill: [Mr. Somervell] took a fairly long sentence and broke it up into its components by means of black, red, blue, and green inks[;] subject, verb object: relative clauses, conditional clauses, conjunctive and disjunctive clauses—each had its color and its bracket. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book. [Winston Churchill learned color-coded grammar.]

Grammar and life 134 “Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.” George Eliot, Middlemarch. [Auxiliaries weaken writing.]


Greatness
Greatness 508 His [the sculptor named Story’s] real misfortune, perhaps, was that his undeniable facility never deepened into greatness. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times. [He was too facile in his sculpting to achieve greatness.]

Greatness 203 …the supremely great figures in history—Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Newton, Goethe—must be to some extent a kind of summation of their times. Clark, Civilization. [Great figures in history summed up their times.]

Greatness 229 Great men have a curious way of appearing in complementary pairs. Clark, Civilization. [Great men seem to appear in complementary pairs.]

Greatness 1072 He learns to welcome misfortune, learns that adversity is the prosperity of the great. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Worship. [Adversity is an opportunity for greatness.]

Greatness 1186 Walter Savage Landor: “The great man is he who hath nothing to fear and nothing to hope from another.” Emerson, Uncollected Prose. [Greatness does not fear others or hope in others.]

Greatness 630 The heroes of the hour are relatively great: … are such, in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then in request. Emerson, Representative Men: Uses of Great Men. [Greatness is a matter of timing; the world is ready for them.]

Greatness 632 …great men exist that there may be greater men. Emerson, Representative Men: Uses of Great Men. [Great men lead to greater men.]

Greatness 710 Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by originality. Emerson, Representative Men: Shakespeare, or the Poet. [Great men are not so much original, but have range and extent.]

Greatness 729 Bonaparte was the idol of common men, because he had in transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. Emerson, Representative Men: Bonaparte, or the Man of the World. [Bonaparte represented the capability for greatness in the common man.] [So did Truman. However, from what I have learned about Truman, he was a voracious reader who had capabilities for learning and decision making far beyond most of us. RayS.]

Greatness 739 We cannot, in the universal imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men, sufficiently congratulate ourselves on this strong and ready actor, who took occasion by the beard, and showed us how much may be accomplished by the mere force of such virtues as all men possess in less degrees; namely by punctuality, by personal attention, by courage, and thoroughness. Emerson, Representative Men: Bonaparte, or the Man of the World. [Bonaparte was great because of his punctuality, personal attention, courage and thoroughness.]

Greatness 761 I join Napoleon with him [Goethe] as being both representatives of the impatience and reaction of nature against the morgue of conventions…. Emerson, Representative Men, Goethe, or the Writer. [Goethe and Bonaparte defied conventions.]

Greatness 265 Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh: to be great is to be misunderstood. Emerson, Self-Reliance. [The great are usually misunderstood.] [Reba, if you’re reading this, Emerson would have been better to stop at my summary in bold face. I’ll never forget that you said, in response to this quote, that definitions had to be reversible, and that to be misunderstood does not imply greatness. RayS.]

Greatness 595 Greatness of soul is…knowing how to put oneself in order and circumscribe oneself. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Greatness is knowing how to organize and limit oneself.]

Greatness 472 Perhaps that is the final test of greatness—to be so among one’s own. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [The final test of greatness is to be accepted as such by one’s own.] [But prophets are ignored in their own homes. RayS.]

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 8, 2007. Government.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

Government
Government 384 “People don’t quite know what to make of a government which is really set up for their own benefit.” Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Government 61 [Demosthenes to the Sausageman who doesn’t know how to run the country]: Do what you’re doing now--/ making a hash of things in general,/ sweetening up the mess to public taste/ With a dash of oratorical applesauce. Aristophanes, Knights. [Government is like a sausage maker, making a hash of things in general.]

Government 30 MacLeish was caught…as others had been before him, in the clash of competing bureaucracies in Washington. Blum, V Was for Victory

Government 142 Yarmolinsky on leadership of govt. agencies: ...the ability to make use of the vast resources of government without becoming...merely instruments of the permanent staff. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days [Administrations try to control, not be controlled by, the permanent staffs.]

Government 625 The permanent government was…politically neutral; its essential commitment was to doing things as they had been done before. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days [Permanent government employees are dedicated to doing things as they have always been done.]

Government 626 …the permanent government remained in bulk a force against innovation with an inexhaustible capacity to dilute, delay, and obstruct presidential purpose. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days [Permanent government employees try to dilute, delay and obstruct presidential purposes.]

Government 579 JFK: “What your government believes,” he wrote to Khrushchev in 1961, “is its own business; what it does in the world is the world’s business.” Sorenson, Kennedy

Government 690 Lincoln: It has long been a grave question…whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own excellence in great emergencies. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Governments must not be too strong for the people’s liberties but must be strong enough in great emergencies.]

Government 406 Government must be examined not in the context of the old dichotomies of liberal/conservative or private/public but in the context of a common effort to grapple with new problems posed by a new era. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [Governments must not be lost in dichotomies of ideology but must focus on a common effort to grapple with new problems in new eras.]

Government 21 Plato: The state is what it is because its citizens are what they are. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [The nature of the state reflects its citizens; the state represents its citizens.]

Government 192 Spinoza: the last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear; rather it is to free each man from fear that he may live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his neighbor. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [The purpose of the state is not to dominate and restrain men by fear, but to free them to live secure without injuring themselves or their neighbors.]

Government 192 Spinoza: The end of the state…is to lead men…that they may not waste their strength in hatred, anger and guile, nor act unfairly toward one another. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [The state must lead men not to expend their strength in hatred, anger, guile or unfairness toward one another.]

Government 192 Spinoza: Freedom is the goal of the state because the function of the state is to promote growth, and growth depends on capacity finding freedom. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [The function of the state is to promote growth and growth depends on freedom.]

Government 196 Spinoza: People at last prefer tyranny to chaos. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [People prefer tyranny to chaos.]

Government 436 Nietzsche: The problem of politics is to prevent the businessman from ruling...such a man has the short sight and narrow grasp...not the long view and wide range of the born aristocrat trained to statesmanship. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche. [The problem of politics is to keep businessmen from ruling because of their short-sightedness and narrow views in contrast to the broad view of the aristocrat.]

Government 17 The main gain of modern man has been the weakening of governments. Mencken, Minority Report. [The goal of modern man is to weaken governments.]

Government 109 It would be interesting to hear argument in favor of the doctrine that it is one of the functions of government to provide a job for every citizen. Mencken, Minority Report. [Is the function of government to provide jobs for every citizen?]

Government 143 …the American people have been bolstering up its [government's] powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs…pay[ing] for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties. Mencken, Minority Report. [The American people have given more and more power to their governments, increasing their taxes and losing their liberties.]

Government 159 [The New Deal] not only cost the American tax payer billions and greatly depleted the accumulated resources of the country, it also burdened future generations with a charge that will grow larger and larger as year chases year. Mencken, Minority Report. [The New Deal raised taxes, depleted the resources of the country and passed on a government that will just grow bigger and bigger.]

Government 168 The only way a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man shall do. Mencken, Minority Report. [If a government wants every person to have a job, it will also decide what each person can and should do.]

Government 217 The state is not force alone…depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility…aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey. Mencken, Minority Report. [The aim of government is not simply to force men to obey, but to make them want to obey.]

Government 561 …that truly, the only interest for the consideration of the state, is persons: that property will always follow persons; that the highest end of government is the culture of men: and if men can be educated, the institutions will share their improvement…. Emerson, Politics. [Educating people will improve our institutions.]

Government 212 In government it is always easier to go forward with a program that does not work than to stop it altogether and admit failure. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. [In government it is easier to go on with failed programs than to admit they were failures.]

Government 633 McNamara on reading parts of the Pentagon Papers: “You know…they could hang people for what’s in there.” Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. [On the Pentagon Papers: people could hang for what is in there. ]

Government 32 …British constitution, consisting of King, Lords and Commons…the most perfect system that the wisdom of the ages has produced…the distributions of power…support and control each other. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [The British Constitution consists of King, Lords and Commons, with the distributions of power supporting and controlling each other.]

Government 37 …Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington…define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. Adams, Novanglus, Feb. 6, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [A republic is a government of laws, not of men.]

Government 43 …our ancestors have turned the savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race. Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [The British Empire has grown by promoting the wealth and happiness of the human race.]

Government 47 …government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind…. Second Continental Congress, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [The purpose of government is to promote the welfare of mankind.]

Government 71 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Declaration of Independence, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [Government’s powers come from the consent of the governed.]

Government 197 [Lincoln] wrote of the legitimate object of government being “to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well for themselves,” such as “making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like, provide for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools….” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years [Government’s role is do for people what they cannot do for themselves.]

Government 198 Lincoln: Military and civil departments were necessary: “If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or noncompliance with contracts, it is a common object with peaceful and just men to prevent it.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years [Government’s purpose is to keep men from killing, beating or constraining others.]

Government socialism 222 ...those who interpreted all government planning as socialism or worse. Blum, V Was for Victory. [Interpreted any government planning as socialism.]

Government 272 There is a place in governance for representatives…the one whose job it is to take the time to understand all the nuances of complicated issues. Gates, The Road Ahead. [Government requires representatives who try to understand the nuances of complicated issues.]

Monday, May 28, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 28, 2007. Goethe. Good.

Goethe
Goethe 212 ...from the start of his career, Goethe shrewdly evaded stultification by becoming an endless experimenter.... Bloom, Western Canon. [Goethe endlessly experimented and therefore avoided becoming complacent with his talent.]


Good
Good 329 Johnson: …no man is good but as he wishes the good of others…. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [People are good only as they wish good for others.]

Good 18 All good is eternally reproductive. Emerson, Nature.

Good 698 If it [the good they seek] come at all, it is something else, which they never dreamed of, and did not particularly want. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance. [We don’t expect any good and if it comes, it’s a good they never expected and did not want.]

Good 154 Albert Schweitzer: ...the good consists in preserving life, in supporting it, in seeking to carry it to its highest value. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album. [Good preserves life, supports it, and tries to increase its value.]

Good and evil 386 Spencer: …the association of pleasure and pain, on the average, with good or evil conduct…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Pleasure and pain equate to good and evil.]

Good and evil 988 Every wrong thing makes the gulf deeper; every right one helps to fill it up. [Wrongs create deeper holes and good acts fill them up.]

Good and Evil 568 Religion alone can interpret to us what, without its help, man cannot comprehend: why, for what purpose, kind and noble beings, able to find happiness in life, who have not only never injured a living thing but are indeed necessary to the happiness of others, are called away to God, while the wicked, the useless, or those who are a burden to themselves and other people, are left living. Tolstoi, War and Peace. [Why do the good die and the evil live on?]

Good fortune 426 Captive: But since good seldom or never comes pure and undiluted without being accompanied or followed by some evil that spoils or disturbs it…. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part One: 1605. [Good is always accompanied by evil.]

Goodness and evil 417 [Nietzsche] Zarathustra: …the highest evil is part of the highest goodness. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche. [Good and evil are intertwined.]

Sunday, May 27, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 27, 2007. God.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

God
God 231 Diderot: The earth will come into its own only when heaven is destroyed. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire. [The earth will be truly independent when we stop believing in heaven.]

God 383 Melville to Hawthorne: “I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times. [We are all pieces of God’s being.]

God 120 But beyond lies the great darkness of the ultimate Dreamer, who dreamed the light and the galaxies. Eiseley, The Star Thrower [God is the ultimate dreamer].

God 453 Heine, the major Jewish writer in German before Kafka, said that God’s name was Aristophanes. Bloom, Western Canon. [Aristophanes seemed to have the wisdom of God.]

God 101 Einstein: My religion...consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds...deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [Einstein’s reasons for believing in God: the presence of a superior reasoning power, the details of which we are barely able to perceive.]

God 210 Dr. Josef Breuer: “Our bodies are incredibly intricate machines that could only have been produced by a genius…the greatest work of art on earth….” Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Our bodies are God’s greatest work of art on earth.]

God 720 …each man’s god is formed in the likeness of his father. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

God 100 …for God sets us nothing but riddles. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

God 125 “There would have been no civilization if they hadn’t invented God.” Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Without God there would be no civilization.]

God 212 As for me, I’ve long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Did God create man or man create God?]

God 213 It’s not that I don’t accept God, you must understand; it’s the world created by Him I don’t and cannot accept. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [I accept God, but I don’t accept the world He created.]

God 265 Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvelously know their path though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Every blade of grass and insect, without intelligence, knows exactly what it is supposed to do and does it.]

God 499 It’s possible for one who doesn’t believe in God to love mankind, don’t you think so? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

God 532 A new man’s arising—that I understand…and yet I am sorry to lose god. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [If a new man arises, we will lose God.]

God 535 Only how is he [man] going to be good without God? Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Can man be good without God?]

God 211 Lincoln: In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God…God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time…quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party…. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Both sides claim to have God on their side; God can’t be for both; perhaps his purpose involves neither.]

God 635 Lincoln: Sometimes it seems necessary that we should be confronted with perils which threaten us with disaster in order that we may not get puffed up and forget Him who has much work for us yet to do. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Sometimes we need great perils to threaten us so that we don’t forget God who has much yet for us to do.]

God 71 God is pure energy. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

God 114 F. Bacon: “I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [I would rather accept all the fables in all the great religious books than believe that the world is a frame without a mind.]

God 175 Spinoza: …for I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would…say that God is eminently triangular, and a circle that the divine nature is eminently circular; and thus would every one ascribe his own attributes to God. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Everyone ascribes his own characteristics to God.]

God 225 On the Lisbon earthquake of November 1, 1755, in which 30,000 died: [Voltaire] …gave vigorous expression to the old dilemma: either God can prevent evil and he will not; or he wishes to prevent it and he cannot. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire. [What is the role of God in evil in the world?]

God 241 Voltaire: “I want my lawyer, my tailor and my wife to believe in God,” says “A” in “A, B, C”; “so, I imagine, I shall be less robbed and deceived.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire. [God is necessary so that I am not robbed and deceived.]

God 365 Spencer: Let religion cease to picture the Absolute as a magnified man; much worse, as a cruel and blood-thirsty and treacherous monster, afflicted with a “love of adulation such as would be despised in a human being.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Don’t picture God with a love of adulation that we would respect in no man.]

God 233 It is difficult to imagine anyone having any real hopes for the human race in the face of the fact that the great majority of men still believe that the universe is run by a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft and girth, who is nevertheless interested in the minutest details of the private conduct of even the meanest men. Mencken, Minority Report. [There is no hope for a human race that believes in a spirit of astronomical size that is interested in the smallest details of the private conduct of even the lowest man. ]

God 60 Joyce Cary: God is as real as the trees. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work. [If trees are real, God is real.]

God 341 To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to follow the path that His love shows us, instead of through conceit or cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in grateful service…. Jewett, A Country Doctor. [We should stop trying to make ourselves, but rather follow the path that God has laid out for us.]

God 403 St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose center was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere. Emerson, Circles. [God is a circle whose center is everywhere and His circumference nowhere.]

God 387 The Allied commander-in-chief invoked the name of God; the German commander invoked the name of Adolf Hitler. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [The Allies invoked God; the German soldier invoked Hitler.]

God and Man 141 It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him. Mencken, Minority Report. [It takes a long time for us to realize that God will not help us.]

God and man 26 Einstein: “I cannot believe…that God plays dice with the world.” Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [The world is not a set of dice for God to play with.]

God and man 183 God to man (Adam) after the Creation: As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life…able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys; we are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [God said to Adam, you will know some of Our sorrows and joys; I am partly sorry for you and partly hopeful.]

God and science 62 ...the universe, the objective world of reality...can be encompassed in its entire majesty only by a cosmic intellect...can also be represented symbolically by a mathematician, as a four-dimensional space time continuum. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [The universe can be encompassed only by a cosmic intellect; mathematics can represent it symbolically.]

God and War 394 [Of Meade and Lee]: …praying regularly to the same God while they led their hosts seeking to mangle and eviscerate each other. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Praying to God to help us mangle and eviscerate each other.]

God’s creation 183 God to his Creation: Now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock off for the weekend. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [God said, “Get along with each other; I am going to knock it off for the weekend.”]

Gods xiii The gods themselves…must be capable of evolving, as men have evolved, from a kind of savagery to a higher way of life…an idea that must be completely foreign to those who use the word ‘god’ in the context of the Jewish or Christian tradition. Warner, Euripides. [What is the nature of the gods? Do they evolve? ]

Gods 124 Hippolytus: I wish the race of men had the power to curse the gods. Euripides, Hippolytus. [I wish men could curse the gods as man is cursed by the gods.]


Gods and man 261 Euripides: Again and again he shows up the gods in accordance with the popular conception of them, as lustful, jealous, moved by the meanest motives, utterly inferior to the human beings they bring disaster upon.... E. Hamilton. The Greek Way. [Euripides shows the gods to be lustful, jealous, moved by mean motives and inferior to human beings. ]

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 23, 2007. Gifted. Gifts. Glory. Goals.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Gifted
Gifted 1166 We feel that a man gifted like him should not leave the world as he found it. Emerson, Uncollected Prose.

Gifts
Gifts 537 He is a good man who can receive a gift well. Emerson, Gifts.

Glory
Glory 71 There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience—the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears of our contemporaries or “of those who are to be.” Hoffer, The True Believer [No one strives for glory without awareness of an audience.]

Glory 125 The combination of a desire for glory and an inability to endure the monotony it entails puts many people in the asylum. F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing. [If one seeks glory, one must endure monotony; those who can’t, wind up in an asylum. ]

Goals
Goal 501 JFK: The long-term danger…came not from communism but from ‘hunger, ignorance, poverty and disease: we must…keep those enemies the point of our attack, and make imaginative use of our scientific and technological capacity.’ Schlesinger, A Thousand Days. [Fight hunger, ignorance, poverty and disease, not Communism.]

Goal 569 JFK: No one can doubt that the wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Goal 209 To do something, say something, see something before anybody else--these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame or commonplace. Twain, Innocents Abroad. [To do, say or see something before others can is a great pleasure. ]

Goal 275 …a man must set an example, and so draw men’s souls out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea may not die. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Goal 352 …building the connections of insight, understanding, and commonality among all societies—an imperative undertaking if the world is to become more peaceful and more prosperous. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.

Goal 424 Nietzsche: Just as morality lies not in kindness but in strength, so the goal of human effort should be not the elevation of all but the development of finer and stronger individuals. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche. [We need to make the strong stronger.]

Goal 427 Nietzsche: Only by seeing such a man [superman] as our goal and reward of our labors can we love life and live upward. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Nietzsche. [Superman is our goal, the reward of our labors.]

Goal 989 He fails to make his place good in the world, unless he not only pays his debt, but also adds something to the common wealth. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Wealth. [People make their places in the world if they add something to the commonwealth.]

Goal 1071 The man whose eyes are nailed not on the nature of an act, but on the wages, whether it be money, or office or fame—is almost equally low. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Worship. [Those concerned only with reward, not with the acts and efforts to achieve the award, are low. ]

Goal 1096 …the wish to serve—to add somewhat to the well-being of men. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Considerations by the Way.

Goal 632 It is for man to tame the chaos; on every side…to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. Emerson, Representative Men: Uses of Great Men. [People must tame the chaos and sow the seeds of love.]

Goal 448 I am content to enjoy the world without pressing after it, to live a merely excusable life, one that may merely be no burden to myself or to others. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [My goal is not to be a burden to myself or others. ]

Goal 472 I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am looking for. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Goal 532 I endeavor to keep my soul and my thoughts in repose. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Goal 592 To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Our goal is to establish order and tranquility in our conduct.]

Goal 513 …I had learned the great and obvious fact that the decisive desire of men is not for peace…but for life in dignity…. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Goals 594 JFK: We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills…. Sorenson, Kennedy. [We strive for goals that are difficult because they help us organize our energies and skills.]

Goals 91 In the Senate, I found that big reform is as easy as small reform…complete overhaul takes the same amount of time, the same number of meetings, the same energy level as a more modest objective. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [All objectives require the same amount of work, large or modest.]

Goals 341 “Remember that by seeking the impossible you may justly be denied the possible….” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part One: 1605. [By seeking the impossible, you could lose the possible.]

Goals 505 Fame, glory, wealth, honor have in the prospect pleasing illusions; but they who come to possess any of them will find they are ingredients toward happiness to be regarded only in the second place, and that when they are valued in the first degree, they are…disappointing….. Steele, 9/11/1711. The Spectator. [Fame, glory, wealth and honor are illusions if they are the goals and not the achievements.]

Goals and Achievements 46 This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only…not an empire, but the project of an empire. Adam Smith, The Cost of Empire, 1776. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [The empire is not a goal; it is instead a project.]

Monday, May 21, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 21, 2007. Gentleman. George Eliot. The German Dictatorship.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

Gentleman
Gentleman 33 Emma: Compare [Mr. Martin, a farmer’s son] with their [Mr. Knightley and Mr. Weston, gentlemen] manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent...the older a person grows...the more important it is that their manners should not be bad--the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. Austen, Emma34 Emma on Mr. Elton, a clergyman, therefore, gentleman: Mr. Elton is good humored, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. Austen, Emma157 But the merit of the curricle did not all belong to the horses; Henry drove so well—so quietly—without making any disturbance, without parading to her, or swearing at them…and then his hat sat so well, and the innumerable capes of his great coat looked so becomingly important…to be driven by him, next to being dancing with him, was certainly the greatest happiness in the world. Austen, Northanger Abbey. 111 Castiglione’s The Courtier: ..ideal of a gentleman...must not hurt people’s feelings or make them feel inferior by showing off…must be easy and natural.... Clark, Civilization. 231 Gentleman: …a graceful unconcern and gentleman-like ease. Steele, 5/26/1711. The Spectator. 235 Gentleman: A man whose fortune is plentiful, shows an ease in his countenance, and confidence in his behavior which he that is under wants and difficulties cannot assume. Addison, 5/26/1711. [RFS comment: In short, a gentleman is “cool.”] The Spectator. [Definitions of a gentleman.]

Gentleman 33 Emma on Mr. Martin, a farmer’s son: Mr. Martin is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr. Weston’s time of life?...a completely gross, vulgar farmer--totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss. Austen, Emma. 149 Mr. Knightley: No, Emma, your amiable young man [Frank Churchill] can be amiable only in French, not in English....He may be very ‘amiable,’ have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people....I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal; that he is well grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners. Austen, Emma. 397 Emma on Frank Churchill after learning that he has been engaged to Miss Jane Fairfax since before coming to Highbury: None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life. Austen, Emma [Definitions of a non-gentleman.]

Gentleman 203 Mr. Frank Churchill on people who are reserved: It is a most repulsive quality...often times very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing....there is safety in reserve, but no attraction....one cannot love a reserved person. Austen, Emma [Someone who is shy and quiet can not be a gentleman]

Gentleman 206 ...liberal allowances were made for the little excesses of such a handsome young man--one who smiled so often and bowed so well. Austen, Emma [Allowances are made for the excesses of handsome men.]

Gentleman 446 Mr. Knightley: My Emma, does not everything serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other? Austen, Emma [We must honor truth and be sincere in our dealings with others.]

Gentleman 258 …Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right clothes on by a certain natural affinity without ever having to think about them. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [He dressed perfectly but appeared to have given no thought to it.]

Gentlewoman 265 …stifling oppression of that gentlewoman’s world, where everything was done for her and none asked for her aid…. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [The gentlewoman’s oppressed world where everything was done for her and she was never asked for assistance.]


George Eliot
George Eliot 322 Middlemarch is a huge, intricate representation of an entire provincial society set in the recent past.... Bloom, Western Canon.

German Dictatorship
German Dictatorship 289 Total rule demands keeping the public under the constant pressure of major events and successes, distracting them from domestic coercion by holding out hope for external expansion, compensating for the loss of freedom by the constant acceleration of the sense of revolution and mission. Bracher, The German Dictatorship [Totalitarian rule means keeping the public’s focus on events, successes, hope and sense of mission.]


German Dictatorship 311 Hitler: “We must always ask so much that we cannot be satisfied.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship

German Dictatorship 342 The oppressed became oppressors, the subjugated became the master race which, though unable and not allowed to govern itself, could govern others. Bracher, The German Dictatorship [In Germany, the oppressed became the oppressors.]

German Dictatorship 422 Himmler: “Whether 10,000 Russian women keel over from exhaustion in the construction of an anti-tank ditch interests me only insofar as the ditch for Germany gets finished.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship [I don’t care how many people die completing the project, I am only interested in seeing that the project is completed.]

German Dictatorship 424 On July 16, 1941, Hitler gave as a reason for the mass executions the pacification of the “vast terrain”: “This can best be done by shooting dead anyone who even looks askance.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship [Euphemism for executions: “pacification.”]

German Dictatorship democracy 299 ...the alleged superiority of the dictatorships over the democracies, with their waning prestige and internal conflicts.... Bracher, The German Dictatorship [Dictatorships are superior to democracies because of the latter’s internal conflicts.]


German Dictatorship democracy 501 The German dictatorship has failed, but German democracy has not yet been secured. Bracher, The German Dictatorship [The German dictatorship has failed, but democracy is not yet secure.]

German Dictatorship individual religion 9 …modern dictatorship…calls for the extinction of the individual…forced him into mass organizations and commits him to a political creed which becomes a ‘political religion,’ a binding religious surrogate. Bracher, The German Dictatorship [Modern dictatorship calls for the extinction of the individual.]

Germany 498 The Germans--the “northern barbarians,” Santayana calls them--had never really accepted Roman Christianity...non-Christian ethics of valor and honor, a non-Christian fund of superstition, legend and sentiment...Gothic cathedrals were barbaric, not Roman. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Santayana. [The Germans never accepted Roman Christianity.]

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 19, 2007. Genius.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Genius
Genius 106 …for genius is an apex, to which a family builds itself through talent, and through talent in the genius's offspring subsides again towards the mediocrity of man. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [Families build toward an apex of genius and then subsides again into mediocrity.] [The theme of Thornton Wilder’s The Eighth Day.]

Genius 297 Hegel: The genius merely places another stone on the pile, as others have done. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Hegel. [The genius adds another stone to the pile built up by other geniuses.]

Genius 297 Hegel: Such individuals had no consciousness of the general idea they were unfolding…but they had an insight into the requirements of the time—what was ripe for development…the very truth for their age, for their world. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Hegel. [Geniuses recognize when the time is ripe for certain ideas to flourish.]

Genius 334 Schopenhauer : Genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes and aims entirely out of sight, of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer. [The real genius is able to forget about himself.]

Genius 18 Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing. [Genius is the ability to effect what you are thinking.]

Genius 236 Johnson: …a man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [Men of genius are ruined only by themselves.]

Genius 1166 It is true, though somewhat sad, that every fine genius teaches us how to blame himself: Being so much, we cannot forgive him for not being more. Emerson, Uncollected Prose. [Every genius is blamed for not doing more.]

Genius 635 Great geniuses have the shortest biographies…lived in their writings and so their house and street life was trivial and commonplace. Emerson, Representative Men: Plato, or The Philosopher. [Geniuses subordinate living to their work.]

Genius 691 The genius…beholds the design…. Emerson, Representative Men: Montaigne, or The Skeptic. [Geniuses see patterns.]

Genius 710 The greatest genius is the most indebted man. Emerson, Representative Men: Shakespeare, or the Poet. [Geniuses borrow from others.]

Genius 761 The secret of genius is…to realize all that we know. Emerson, Representative Men, Goethe, or the Writer. [Geniuses realize what they know.]

Genius 58 Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence. Emerson, The American Scholar. [Geniuses are the enemies of genius because they try to influence other geniuses.]

Genius 259 To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,--that is genius. Emerson, Self-Reliance. [The genius believes that what he knows others also know but don’t realize it.]

Genius 492 …and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power. Emerson, Experience. [Real romance is the transformation of what the genius knows into practical power.]

Genius 496 There are geniuses in trade, as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate, is not to be told: it lies in the man—that is all anybody can tell you about it. Emerson, Character. [People cannot tell you, and neither can the genius, why the genius is a genius.]

Genius 82 Genius, he [Ladislaw] held, is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [Genius must be unfettered, needing spontaneity and receptivity.]

Genius and madness 335 Dr. Beatrice Hinkle: Genius and madness have from time immemorial been associated, and the lives of the creative artists and geniuses in all fields do reveal an overwhelming preponderance of erratic conduct, emotional stress, and irrational reactions, coupled with definite psychic disturbances manifested in conflict, struggle and mental disorder. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book. [Genius and madness have always been associated.]

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 17, 2007. Frontier. Frustration. Geese. Generations.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

Frontier
Frontier 33 A saying, “The cowards never started and the weak ones died by the way,” was unfair to the strong ones who died by the way of sudden maladies or long rains, windstorms, howling blizzards. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Frustration
Frustration 34 The frustrated, oppressed by their shortcomings, blame their failure on existing restraints. Hoffer, The True Believer. [The frustrated because of their own shortcomings blame outside constraints for their failures.]

Frustration 43 Hitler…knew that the chief passion of the frustrated is “to belong….” Hoffer, The True Believer

Geese
Geese 163 [Song of the wild geese]: We wander the sky with many a cronk/ And land in the pasture fields with a plonk. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Generations
Generations 260 The NSDAP had a youthful leadership corps, had built up strong youth and student organizations, and its propaganda played on the generation problem: “Make room, you old ones,” was an effective battle cry against the Weimar establishment. Bracher, The German Dictatorship.

Generations 255 …the spirit of the past brooding over a new generation…still fed romantically on the mistakes and…dreams of dead statesmen and poets. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise. [The spirit of the past still dominated the younger generation.]

Generations 1103 But, gazing at them [the ruins of Rome], we recognize how undesirable it is to build the tabernacle of our brief lifetime out of permanent materials, with a view to their being occupied by future generations. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [Looking over the ruins of Rome, we realize how futile it is to build permanently what will be occupied by future generations.]

Generations 1103 It is beautiful, no doubt, and exceedingly satisfactory to some of our natural instincts, to imagine our far posterity dwelling under the same roof-tree as ourselves. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [It is satisfying to think of future generations living in the same house as we ourselves.]

Generations 1103 …we may build almost immortal habitations, it is true; but we cannot keep them from growing old, musty, unwholesome, dreary, full of death-scents, ghosts and murder-stains…. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [We can build almost immortal habitations, but we can’t keep them from showing the stains of many lives living there.]

Generations 1103 In [America as opposed to Europe], observed the sculptor to Donatello, …each generation has only its own sins and sorrows to bear. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [Each generation has its own sins and sorrows to bear.]

Generations 1103 Here [in Italy] it seems as if all the weary and dreary past were piled upon the back of the present. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [In Italy the past weighs on the present.]

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 15, 2007. Freud. Friendship.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

Freud
Freud 437 [Freud] was called…filthy-minded, prurient, a sexual maniac, a dealer in salaciousness and pornography, a defiler of the spiritual qualities of man, indecent, shameless, lecherous, bestial, a disgrace to his profession, and ultimately the anti-Christ. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [The epithets that Freud endured.]

Freud 573 Before Freud began to explore the unconscious we lived in a dark cave as far as understanding human motivation or character was concerned. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Before Freud explored the unconscious, we could not understand human motivation or character.]

Freud 754 Freud…guilty, in Hebbel’s words, of having “disturbed the sleep of the world.” Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Freud “disturbed the sleep of the world.”]

Freud 820 …as Nietzsche said of Schopenhauer, a thinker and investigator who knew how to stand alone and then drew many to him and with him…. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Freud knew how to stand alone and therefore drew many to him and with him.]

Freud 820 …made even his opponents indebted to him through the creative stimulus they derived from him. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Freud made even his opponents creative.]


Friendship
Friends and enemies 124 Bacon goes on to quote Bias, one of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece: “Love your friend as if he were to become your enemy, and your enemy as if he were to become your friend.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [Treat your friend as if he could become an enemy and your enemy as if he could become your friend.]

Friendship 341 Our intellectual and active powers increase with our affection. Emerson, Friendship. [We grow increasingly intellectually active when we are with friends.]

Friendship 42 Chorus: It is a strange form of anger, difficult to cure/ When two friends turn upon each other in hatred. Euripides, Medea. [When two friends turn to hate each other, it is difficult to cure.]

Friendship 108 Theseus: Alas! There should have been for men some certain signs to mark their true friends, some way of reading in their minds which one is true and which one not a friend at all. Euripides, Hippolytus. [We wish there were some way to tell who are our true and false friends.]

Friendship 78 "He who has many friends has no friend." Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.

Friendship 78 …friendship requires equality; for gratitude gives it at best a slippery basis. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle. [Friendship requires equality; gratitude is a weak basis for friendship.]

Friendship 78 "Benefactors are commonly held to have more friendship for the objects of their kindness than these for him." Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle. [Benefactors are friendly toward those they benefit; those who benefit are less friendly toward their benefactors.]

Friendship 79 Aristotle's ideal man: …is of a disposition to do men service, though he is ashamed to have a service done to him. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle. [Aristotle’s ideal man does things for others but wants no one to do anything for him.]

Friendship 79 To confer a kindness is a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordination. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle. [The benefactor is the superior; the receiver sees himself as subordinate.]

Friendship 116 F. Bacon: A Friend is an ear. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [A friend listens to you.]

Friendship 369 Johnson: Why, there’s Baretti, who is to be tried for his life tomorrow, friends have risen up for him on every side; yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [Though many friends support him, if he be executed, none of them will eat the less.]

Friendship 1174 And, must a selfish care for the spotlessness of our own garments keep us from pressing the guilty ones close to our hearts…. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [Will pride in our innocence cause us not to embrace the guilty?]

Monday, May 14, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 14, 2007. Free Will. Freedom.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. RayS.

Free Will
Free will 179 Spinoza compares the feeling of free will to a stone's thinking, as it travels through space, that it determines its own trajectory and selects the place and time of its fall. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Feeling that one has free will is like a stone’s thinking it controls its flight and its place of landing.]

Free will 322 Schopenhauer : Everyone believes himself…to be perfectly free, even in his individual actions, and he thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life…but…through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity; that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the very beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer. [People think they are free to change, but they soon realize they cannot change their character.]

Free will 452 Bergson: Free will is a corollary of consciousness; to say that we are free is merely to mean that we know what we are doing. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Bergson. [A sense of free will means that we are conscious of what we are doing.]

Free will 525 Dewey: Freedom of the will...is the illumination of conduct by knowledge. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [Free will means that we know what we are doing.]

Free will 376 Boswell on predestination and free will: …but if a thing be certainly foreseen [by God], it must be fixed, and cannot happen otherwise; and if we apply this consideration to the human mind, there is no free will, nor do I see how prayer can be of any avail. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [Predestination means that God sees all and therefore everything is fixed.]


Freedom
Freedom 177 Freedom strictly limited by self-control--that was the idea of Athens at her greatest. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way. [Freedom requires self-control.]

Freedom 495 The German experience has shown that the idea of internal freedom can be throttled by the striving for national unity and a nationalistic foreign policy. Bracher, The German Dictatorship. [Freedom can be destroyed by striving for national unity.]

Freedom 149 ...the freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and self-realization, but freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence. Hoffer, The True Believer [People crave freedom from an autonomous, independent existence.]

Freedom 149 They [the masses] want freedom from “the fearful burden of free choice....” Dostoevsky. Hoffer, The True Believer [People want freedom from the burden of free choice.]

Freedom 710 JFK: “We possess weapons of tremendous power…but they are least effective in combating the weapons most often used by freedom’s foes: subversion, infiltration, guerrilla warfare, civil disorder.” Sorenson, Kennedy [We can’t use our weapons of mass destruction against freedom’s foes who use subversion, infiltration, guerrilla warfare and civil disorder.]

Freedom 581 Isn’t that the broadest road to freedom, the release from the fears and tyrannies imposed upon us before we were capable of judgment? Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [We need to be free from the fears and tyrannies imposed on us when we are young.]

Freedom 29 When you choose an elder, you renounce your own will and yield it to him in complete submission, complete self-abnegation…this terrible school of abnegation is undertaken voluntarily, in the hope of self-conquest, of self-mastery, in order after a life of obedience, to attain perfect freedom, that is, from self; to escape the lot of those who have lived their whole life without finding their true selves in themselves. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [You renounce free will, give complete submission to others in order to escape from self, from having to find your true self.]

Freedom 232 And men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, and that the terrible gift [freedom] that had brought them such suffering, was, at last, lifted from their hearts. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Men rejoiced that they were again led like sheep, free from the suffering that freedom had brought them.]

Freedom 234 Oh, we shall persuade them that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us and submit to us. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [We will persuade them that they can only be free when they renounce their freedom and submit.]

Freedom 234 Freedom, free thought and science will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: ‘Yes, you were right, you alone possess His Mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves.’ Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Freedom leads people to destroy themselves, to destroy others and eventually crawl to submit in order to save them from themselves. ]

Freedom 284 Interpreting freedom as the multiplication and rapid satisfaction of desires. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [Freedom is interpreted as multiplying and satisfying desires.]

Freedom 245 Voltaire: To be free is to be subject to nothing but the laws. . Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Voltaire. [Freedom is to be subject to nothing but laws.]

Freedom 277 Kant: In a way which we feel but cannot prove, each of us is free. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Kant. [We feel that we are free, but can’t prove it.]

Freedom 933 …by this sacredness of individuals, they [the English] have in seven hundred years evolved the principles of freedom. Emerson, English Traits. [By making the individual sacred, the English have evolved the principles of freedom.]

Freedom 522 Never let it be forgotten that Hitler exploited the freedom granted him by the Weimar constitution to destroy the republic. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg. [Hitler exploited the freedoms granted by the constitution in order to destroy the republic.]

Freedom 41 Deny them [the Colonies] this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond which originally made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775. Hofstadter, ed. Great Issues in American History. Vol. 1. Independence. [Deny the [American] Colonies freedom and you will destroy the bond that unites the Empire.]

Freedom of speech 8 The amazing thing is that plays attacking the war policy when the state was at war could be given under state auspices and that Cleon could be most virulently attacked for bad morals and manners when he was himself in the audience. Hadas, ed., The Complete Works of Aristophanes. [The Ancient Greeks had the freedom to criticize public policy in plays that were sponsored by the state and leaders even when the latter were in the audience.]

Freedom of Speech 13 If we are astonished at the temerity of a poet who could say a word for the enemy and many words for pacifism amid the passions of war, we must be amazed at a democracy which permitted and sponsored such a play in time of war, and gave it first prize. Hadas, ed., The Complete Works of Aristophanes. The Acharnians. [The playwrights of Ancient Greece could say a good word about the enemy and pacifism in a time of war in a play sponsored by the government and given first prize by the government.]

Freedom responsibility 180 Man is free and therefore responsible. Pope John Paul II, Threshold [Freedom requires responsibility.]

Freedom, liberty 298 Hegel: …order is the first requisite of liberty. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Hegel. [Freedom requires order.]


Freedom, personality 483 Russell: Freedom is the supreme good; for without it personality is impossible. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell. [Without freedom, personality is impossible.]

Friday, May 11, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 11, 2007. Fighting. Film. Fire. Food. Fool. Foreshadowing. Fortune. Francis Bacon. Free Speech.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Fighting
Fighting 222 There is one fairly good reason for fighting—and that is, if the other man starts it. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Fighting 623 Man had gone on, through age after age, avenging wrong with wrong, slaughter with slaughter. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Fighting 627 Everybody wants to fight…but nobody knows why. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Film
Film 125 Faulkner: ...because a moving picture is by its nature a collaboration, and any collaboration is compromise because that is what the word means--to give and to take. [Films are a collaborative activity.]

Films and novels 252 John Irving: Movies are the enemy of the novel because they are replacing novels. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Fire
Fire 525 [Fire as metaphor]: What but my hopes shot upward e’er so bright/What but my fortunes sunk so low in night? Thoreau, Walden. [Like a fire, my hopes shot up during the day, but my fortunes sunk low in the night.]


Food
Food 235 The Viennese will remain happy and carefree because they love so dearly to eat. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [The Viennese will be forever happy because they love to eat.]

Food 254 Sam Weller: "Wery good thing is weal pie, when you know the lady as made it, and is quite sure it an’t kittens." Dickens, Pickwick. [Veal pie is good if you know it was not made with kittens. ]


Fool
Fool 701 JFK: “If they [the Soviets’ testing of nuclear devices] fooled us once, it’s their fault; if they fool us twice, it’s our fault.” Sorenson, Kennedy [If they fool us once, it’s their fault; the second time, it’s our fault.]

Fool xvi It is related of the great Dr. Clarke, that when in one of his leisure hours he was unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolicsome manner, he observed Beau Nash approaching; upon which he suddenly stopped: --“My boys (said he), let us be grave: here comes a fool.” Dedication to sir Joshua Reynolds. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [Gentlemen, let us stop laughing and be grave; here comes a fool.]

Fool 371 Johnson: Sir, he does not make fools of his company; they whom he exposes are fools already; he only brings them into action. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [He does not make the company fools; he is a fool already.]

Fool 597 Seneca: The life of a fool is without contentment, full of alarm, and wholly given to the future. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Fools 21 Only fools are cocksure. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing 835 [Mrs. Lincoln] quoted him as saying, “I never felt so happy in my life,” and a fear crossed her as she replied, “Don’t you remember feeling just so before our little boy died?” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Do not express your contentment because it foreshadows disaster.]


Fortune
Fortune 21 ...he [Kennedy] regarded his own good fortune as an obligation: “Of those to whom much is given, much is required.” Sorenson, Kennedy [Having good fortune increases your obligation.]


Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon 142 Whenever the spirit of control has overcome the spirit of resignation, Bacon’s influence has been felt. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [Bacon believed that control must replace a feeling of resignation.]


Free Speech
Free speech 27 Its [free speech's] exercise must inevitably benefit fools quite as much as sensible men…. Mencken, Minority Report. [Free speech benefits the fool as well as the sensible person.]

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 10, 2007. Father, Fear, Feeling, Feminism, Fences, Fiction.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Father
Father 229 “Good-by, my father—good-by, all my fathers.” Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night.

Father 487 …the father is the oldest, first, and for children the only authority, and from his autocratic power the other social authorities have developed in the course of the history of human civilization. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [The father is the first authority and all other institutions model themselves on that power.]

Father 659 …an affectionate father who allowed his children to grow up along the lines of their own natures. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [A good father who allows his children to develop their natural abilities.]

Father 720 Freud: …the killing of the father was the wish in the unconscious of every male child…. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Every male child has the unconscious desire to kill his father.]

Father 671 Yes, it’s a fearful thing to shed a father’s blood—the father who has begotten me, loved me, not spared his life for me, grieved over my illnesses from childhood up, troubled all his life for my happiness, and has lived in my joys, in my successes…to murder such a father is inconceivable. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [To murder a father after all he has done for you is inconceivable.]

Father 673 …the father is not merely who begets the child, but he who begets it and does his duty by it. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. [A father is not one who merely begets, but who is also with you as you grow.]

Father 213 Priam: Think me more pitiful by far, since I/ have brought myself to do what no man else/ has done before—to lift to my lips the hand/ of one who killed my son. Homer, Iliad. [I am pitiful because I have made a deal with the man who killed my son.]


Fear
Fear 86 His stomach turned to stone. Childers, Wings of Morning.

Fear 228 [Fear of God]: …constructive, never destructive. Pope John Paul II, Threshold

Fear 14 The Wart found that, although he was frightened of the danger of the forest before it happened, once he was in it he was not frightened any more. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [He was more afraid when anticipating danger than he felt when he was engaged with it.]

Fear 155 “It always kind of scares me these black nights,” said Mrs. Jake Dyer; “I expect something to clutch at me every minute, and I feel as if some sort of creatur’ was travelin’ right behind me when I am out doors in the dark.” Jewett, A Country Doctor. [When I’m out in the dark, I think somebody is following me.]

Fear 65 Fear always springs from ignorance. Emerson, The American Scholar.

Fear 576 He who fears he will suffer already suffers from his fear. Montaigne, Selected Essays.


Fear 1255 …during these last three weeks of the march, he [Pierre] had learned still another new and comforting truth—that there is nothing in the world to be dreaded. Tolstoi, War and Peace [After these experiences, he knew there was nothing to be afraid of in the world.]


Feeling
Feeling 753 It is a matter which you do not see, but feel, and which, when you try to analyze it, seems to lose its very existence…. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance. [You can’t see it, but can only feel it; when you try to analyze it, it tends to disappear from existence.]


Feminism
Feminism 405 Emma Benn was a militant feminist who resented her subsidiary position in an all-male society; she was particularly incensed over the Germanic concept of kinder, kirche, kuche, children, church, kitchen, as being the only activities proper or permissible to women, to which the more flexible Austrian husbands had added a fourth k: kaffeeklatsch. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [She resented being a second class citizen in an all-male society, relegated to children, church, kitchen and kaffeeklatsch.]


Fences
Fences 105 Chesterton: Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

Fiction
Fiction 118 Among all types of paper documents, narrative fiction is one of the few that will not benefit from electronic organization ....novels are linear...isn’t a technological judgment...an artistic one...linearity is intrinsic to the storytelling process. Gates, The Road Ahead. [The storytelling process is linear.]

Fiction 286 Nabokov: For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere connected with other states of being.... Nabokov, Lolita. [The major benefit of fiction is feeling connected to something outside of me.]

Fiction 287 Nabokov: It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author. Nabokov, Lolita. [You don’t read fiction for information. I respectfully disagree. You learn a lot about whaling from Moby Dick, etc. RayS.]

Fiction 25 John Hersey: [fiction] makes truth plausible. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Fiction vi Somerset Maugham: There are three rules for writing the novel: unfortunately, no one knows what they are. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 8, 2007.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Fame
Fame 266 After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome...of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame. Twain, Innocents Abroad. [Rome shows how unsubstantial is fame.]

Fame 272 “It is a good lesson...,” he wrote of his Custom House experiences, “for a man who has dreamed of literary fame...to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance...is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times. [It’s a good experience to have achieved fame in one circle, then to step out of that circle and learn how no one has even heard of you.]

Fame 118 F. Bacon: Phocion took it right, who, being applauded by the multitude, asked, What had he done amiss? Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [When he was being applauded by the multitude, he asked, “What have I done wrong?”]

Fame 126 I was always sorry for such men, for I soon observed that the applause of today was almost invariably followed by the indifference of tomorrow. Mencken, Minority Report. [The applause of today is followed by the indifference of tomorrow.]

Fame 234 When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity for him[;] all he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough. Mencken, Minority Report.

Fame 234 [The mob] always stones those it has worshipped. Mencken, Minority Report.

Families
Families 44 One of the least agreeable circumstances of her residence there, was her being treated with too much confidence by all parties, and being too much in the secret of the complaints of each house…she could do little more than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other…. Austen, Persuasion. [She became the confidante of every member of the family who told her their grievances against other members of the family.]

Family 54 Joyce Cary: [Family life]: Toughest thing in the world…but of course it is also a microcosm of a world…--birth, life, death, love and jealousy, conflict of wills, of authority and freedom, the new and the old. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work. [The family is a microcosm of the world.]


Fanatic
Fanatic 89 The fanatic…embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to. Hoffer, The True Believer [The fanatic adopts a cause, not because he believe in it, but because he needs a cause.]

Fanatic 90 It is doubtful whether the fanatic who deserts his holy cause or is suddenly left without one can ever adjust himself to an autonomous individual existence. Hoffer, The True Believer

Fanaticism 165 [The fanatic] is without the fruitful intervals of groping, when the mind is as it were in solution--ready for all manner of new reactions, new combinations and new beginnings. Hoffer, The True Believer. [The fanatic does not take the opportunity to reflect on and explore ideas.]


Farewells
Farewells 64 Albert Schweitzer: After a farewell, one wishes to be alone. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

Farmer
Farmer 752 Silas Foster: He can do his day’s work…with any man or ox on the farm.

Fashion
Fashion 97 Nor is it so very long since Richard the Third set up half the backs of the nation; and high shoulders, as well as high noses, were the top of the fashion. Steele, 4/6/1711. The Spectator. [Even deformities can become fashionable.]


Fat Man
Fat man 390 ...reg’lar fat man, as hadn’t caught a glimpse of his own shoes for five-and-forty-year. Dickens, Pickwick.

Fate
Fate 160 Chorus: All’s ordained—past all denying. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus. [Everything has been foreordained.]

Fate 97 Oedipus: As it was, where I went all ignorant towards a doom too known to those who planned it. Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus. [I went to my doom without knowing that that was what the gods had planned.]

Fate 37 “Unconsciously, they [his parents] had arrived at the philosophy that foresight merely invited the attention of some baleful intelligence that despised and persecuted the calculating planner.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley. [Conscious planning only invites the eye of the almighty planner.]

Fate 118 Chorus: From fate and from necessity there’s no escape. Euripides, Hippolytus.

Fate 577 …permeating sense of destiny, as though his life had been assigned to him by fate and had to be fulfilled. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [A sense of destiny.]

Fate 952 What ever limits us we call fate. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate.

Fate 954 ‘Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate.

Fate 1289 The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute force or Destiny; the belief that the order of nature and events is controlled by a law not adapted to man, nor man to that, but which holds on its way to the end, serving him if his wishes chance to lie in the same course,--crushing him if his wishes lie contrary to it,--and heedless whether it serves or crushes him. Emerson, Uncollected Prose. [I believe that if one chooses the course blessed by fate, one is successful, that if one chooses a course not blessed by fate, you are crushed by a force that doesn’t care whether you succeed or are crushed.]

Fate 386 …without all the deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might…be led to suspect the insult of a sneer…on the iron countenance of fate. Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables. [We believe in a comprehensive sympathy from above, not the iron countenance of fate.]

Fate 268 Chillingworth to Hester: By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. [Once you chose your course of action, everything that followed became a dark necessity.]

Fate 161 Achilles: But Zeus will not fulfill what men design,/ not all of it. Homer, Iliad. [The gods will not fulfill man’s designs.]

Fate Hecuba, Hector’s mother: Almighty Fate spun this thing for our son/ the day I bore him: destined him to feed the wild dogs after death.… Homer, Iliad. [On the day her son was born, he was destined to die and be eaten by dogs.]

Fate evil 185 Chorus: If evil good appear/ To any, fate is near. Sophocles. Antigone. [If evil appears to be good, your fate is near.]

Monday, May 7, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 7, 2007

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Facts
Facts xvii J.W. Krutch: “Actually we already have more facts than we know how to interpret or how to use wisely.” Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Facts vs. commentaries 44 Isaac Bashevis Singer: …while facts never become obsolete or stale, commentaries always do. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Fads
Fad 427 ...one of your damned new versions of old humbug....” George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Fads 140 The burden [cost] of quackery has never been properly estimated. Mencken, Minority Report.

Failure
Failure 182 I love the lost ones, the failures of the world. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

Failure 64 In recent years, Microsoft deliberately hired a few managers with experience in failing companies...bound to have failures in the future, and I want people here who have proved they can do well in tough situations. Gates, The Road Ahead.

Failure 278 But no one can doubt that failure in Cuba in 1961 contributed to success in Cuba in 1962. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days [The failure at the Bay of Pigs led to success in the Cuban Missile Crisis.]

Failure 125 F. Scott Fitzgerald on his play The Vegetable: People left their seats and walked out, people rustled their programs and talked audibly in bored impatient whispers…but the actors struggled heroically on. F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing. [The experience of a play’s failure.]

Failure 129 I never blame failure—there are too many complicated situations in life—but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort. F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing.

Failure 213 …what could be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain? George Eliot, Middlemarch. [Nothing is sadder than expending so much effort only to fail.]

Failure 242 [After losing the election to Douglas]: …he [Lincoln] joked: he was like the boy who stubbed his toe, “It hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.” [Note: used by Adlai Stevenson in his concession speech after losing to Dwight Eisenhower in the presidential election of 1952.] Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Failure 242 [After losing the election to Douglas, he almost fell while walking]: “It’s a slip and not a fall.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years

Failure success 311 It was the failures who had always won, but by the time they won they had come to be called successes. Eiseley, The Star Thrower.


Faith
Faith 399 The faith that stands on authority is not faith. Emerson, The Over-Soul. [Faith compelled by authority is not faith.]

Faith, Reason, Judgment 23 JFK: ...faith in man’s ability...reason and judgment...is our best and our only hope in the world today. Sorenson, Kennedy

Faith, Understanding 28 According to the ancient exhortations of the saints and doctors of the church, the Christian “believes in order to understand”; but he is also called “to understand in order to believe.” Pope John Paul II, Threshold [Christians believe in order to understand, but they must understand in order to believe.]

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Perspectives on Ideas. May 6, 2007.

Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is my attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.

Experience
Experience 139 The receptive mind makes all the difference, shadowing or lighting the original object. Eiseley, The Star Thrower. [Experience involves a receptive mind.]

Experience Epigraph “Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.

Experience 90 The lovers were standing together at one of the windows; it had a most favorable aspect; and for half a minute, Emma felt the glory of having schemed successfully. Austen, Emma

Experience 366 There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged…something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.

Experience 74 A chill of understanding flashed through me that I feel to this day...the last person to hold that stone in the same way...had been an Indian, a native American grinding corn at Meadow Springs…as if I had reached back in time to touch the hand of the person who had held the stone.... Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek. [As I held the artifact, I felt that I was communing with the last person to hold it, a native American centuries ago.]

Experience 204 But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness with which we all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Experience 408 Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is...different from what we call knowing it....“We must all die” transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness “I must die--and soon.” George Eliot, Middlemarch. [He suddenly realized personally the truth of “All must die.”]

Experience 754 But she ceased thinking how anything would turn out—merely wondering what would come. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [She stopped expecting how things would turn out and simply wondered what would happen.]

Experience 757 She was under the first great shock that had shattered her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and critical of others…. George Eliot, Middlemarch.

Expert and Expertise
Expertise 67 Admiral William Leahy to President Truman, 1945: The [atomic] bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives. A Random Walk in Science.

Experts 346 Kennedy: “All my life I’ve known better than to depend on the experts.” Sorenson, Kennedy

Explaining
Explaining 370 Dionysus: I can’t describe it…only illustrate. Aristophanes, Frogs.

Expression
Expression 346 Lincoln: “He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [He puts the smallest ideas into the most words.]

Expression 440 "…but there's no kind of glasses to remedy the mind." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs. [Eye glasses will not remedy the mind.]

Expression 442 "She died the same year my oldest boy was born, an' the town house was burnt over to the port." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs. [Relating an event to other events.]

Expression 448 "…'tain't worth while to wear a day all out before it comes." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

Expression 462 "There's a great many such strayaway folks, just as there is plants." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

Expression 463 "Yes, Mari' was one o' them pretty little lambs that make dreadful homely old sheep." Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

Expression 478 "No, I shan't trouble the fish a great sight more." Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Expression 482 "'Twas never 'you dear an' you darlin' ' afore folks, an' 'you divil' behind the door!" Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs.

Expression 452 …the beauty of things, which becomes a new, and higher beauty, when expressed. Emerson, The Poet. [Things increase in beauty when they are described in language.]

Expression 195 Margaret Drabble: I think most people are more intelligent than they are given credit for, but that they don’t express themselves in a way people find accessible. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook

Expression 194 Horace: I strive to be concise, and I become obscure. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Expression 1066 It is a great mistake to try to put our best thoughts into human language. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

Expressions 86 When they [male deer] ram heads with each other to establish dominance, sometimes the horns lock, condemning the combatants to a grim danse macabre over hill and dale until they drop of exhaustion and starvation. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

Expressions 411 “He’ll be hungry enough to eat his size.” Jewett, The country of the Pointed Firs.

Expressions 324 “She called such a disarray in the kitchen one morning the monkey’s wedding breakfast…Priscilla has always made use of a great many old-fashioned expressions. Jewett, A Country Doctor.

Extremism
Extremism 375 He [Kennedy] deplored ‘the discordant voices of extremism’ which peddled their frighteningly simple solutions to citizens frustrated and baffled by our national burdens. Sorenson, Kennedy [Extremists peddle simple solutions to frustrated and baffled people.]

Extremism 306 “Resistance to Lincoln is obedience to God” [Banner at Alabama mass meeting]. Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years.