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.]