Note: A bold-face statement at the concusion of a quote is an attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.
Evolution
Evolution xiv J.W. Krutch: “We think of ourselves as the climax of evolution, but we may be hardly more than its beginning.” Eiseley, The Immense Journey [We are not the climax of evolution; we might just be the beginning of it.]
Evolution 354 …in 1859 the old world…crashed to pieces with the publication of the Origin of Species…detailed and richly documented theory of the actual mode and process of evolution ‘by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life.’ Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.
Evolution 396 …Spencer’s usual assumption that evolution and progress are synonymous…. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.
Evolution 457 Bergson: ...evolution appears to us as something quite different from the blind and dreary mechanism of struggle and destruction which Darwin and Spencer described...we sense duration in evolution, the accumulations of vital powers, the inventiveness of life and mind, “the continual elaboration of the absolutely new.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Bergson. [Darwin described evolution as a blind and dreary mechanism of struggle and destruction; Bergson senses in evolution duration, accumulation and inventiveness.]
Evolution 466 We were near to thinking of the world as a finished and predetermined show, in which our initiative was a self-delusion, and our efforts a devilish humor of the gods; after Bergson we come to see the world as the stage and the material of our own originative powers. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Bergson. [Contrary to thinking of the world as a finished product and our initiative as a delusion, Bergson saw it as a stage for our creative powers.]
Evolution 47 Bishop Wilberforce to Huxley: “Is it on your grandfather’s or your grandmother’s side that the ape ancestry comes in?” Caullery and Tetry A Random Walk in Science.
Evolution 19 …the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him [man] hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. Darwin, Descent of Man. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought. [Instead of man’s having just been placed in the world, evolution suggests that man has a higher destiny in the future.]
Evolution 5 Evolution is still an infinitely long and tedious biologic game, with only the winners staying at the table. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell. [Evolution is a game with only the winners staying at the table.]
Excellence
Excellence 81 Can excellence be learned? E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.
Excellence 76 [Excellence is the mean between extremes.] Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Aristotle.
Excellence 189 Spinoza: But all excellent things are as difficult as they are rare. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Excellence 314 Schopenhauer : All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Schopenhauer.
Excellence 1037 There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Behavior.
Existence
Existence 201 You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth…. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches [The luxury of spending a life in bed like an oyster in a shell, inactive, conscious only of warmth.]
Existence 190 “The whole of existence frightens me,” protested the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard; “from the smallest fly to the mystery of the Incarnation, everything is unintelligible to me, most of all myself.” Eiseley, The Star Thrower [Existence is unintelligible to me, most especially my own.]
Existentialism
Existentialism 21 …man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only afterwards, defines himself. Sartre, Existentialism. Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought. [Man first exists and then defines himself.]
Existentialism 21 Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be…. Sartre, Existentialism Adler and VanDoren, eds. Great Treasury of Western Thought. [Man is what he wills himself to be.]
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. May 3, 2007.
Note: If the last sentence in the quote is in brackets, I attempted to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English. How did I do? Rays.
Ethics
Ethics 40 Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong; morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole: probably all three doctrines must be combined to find a perfect ethics. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Ethics 174 Spinoza: For one and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Behavior can be good, bad or indifferent at the same time.]
Ethics 181 [Spinoza] builds his ethic not on altruism and the natural goodness of man, like Utopian reformers, nor on selfishness and the natural wickedness of man, like cynical conservatives, but on what he considers to be an inevitable and justifiable egoism…thinks that egoism is a necessary corollary of the supreme instinct of self-preservation; "no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good." Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Spinoza does not build his ethic on altruism or on selfishness and the natural wickedness of man but on egoism that does that which is good for self.]
Euphemism
Euphemism 368 Eichmann organized the “Central Office for Jewish Emigration.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship
Euphemism 225 The SS bureaucracy…continued to employ Aesopian language, for example, referring to deportations to concentration camps as “having been emigrated”; and evaluation and deportation, “special treatment” and “disposition” meant extermination. Bracher, The German Dictatorship
Euphemism 728 “Retreat is not flight,” said Don Quixote, “…I confess that I retired but I did not fly; and in this I have imitated many valiant persons who have reserved themselves for better times.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615. [“Retreat” does not mean “flight”; those who retreated saved themselves for better times.]
Euripides
Euripides Viii …emphasis on the individual, in particular on individual suffering…. Warner, Euripides.
Euripides xv It is in showing the individuality and also the universality of suffering that Euripides deserves the title of ‘most tragic poet.’ Warner, Euripides. [Euripides was “the most tragic poet” because he showed the universality of suffering.]
Europe
Europe 863 This long descent of families and this cleaving through the ages to the same spot of ground captivates the imagination. Emerson, English Traits. [Americans are captivated by the Europeans’ remaining in the same place for centuries.]
Evaluation
Evaluation 143 The spiritual, mystical dimensions of the Church are much greater than any sociological statistics could ever possibly show. Pope John Paul II, Threshold. [Statistics can never measure the influence of the Catholic Church.]
Evaluation 186 Thomas Lincoln on being asked by his second wife which of his wives he liked best: “Oh, now Sarah, that reminds me of old John Hardin down in Kentucky who had a fine-looking pair of horses, and a neighbor coming in one day and looking at them said, “John, which horse do you like best?”…“I can’t tell; one of them kicks and the other bites and I don’t know which is wust.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Events
Events 962 Person makes event, and event person. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate. [People make events and events shape people.]
Evil
Evil 125 He [Hawthorne] was fascinated by the ambiguity and deceptiveness of evil. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.
Evil 101 That the evil men do lives after them is partly due to the fact that those who have reason to hate the evil most shape themselves after it and thus perpetuate it. Hoffer, The True Believer. [Evil lives on because the people who hate an evil allow themselves to copy it.]
Evil 570 [King] Arthur: When I was a young man I did something which was not just, and from it has sprung the misery of my life; do you think you can stop the consequences of a bad action, by doing good ones afterwards?…I don’t…have been trying to stopper it down with good actions, ever since, but it goes on in widening circles…will not be stoppered. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [The evil consequences of an act cannot be stopped from expanding.]
Evil 39 All evil is disharmony: between man and nature, or man and men, or man and himself. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Evil 17 No one can ever really avoid [doing] what he holds to be evil. Mencken, Minority Report. [People cannot stop themselves from doing what they perceive of as evil.]
Evil 77 Evil...is like cold, which is the privation of heat. Emerson, Divinity College Address. [Evil is the negative of something positive. ]
Evil 456 …the oldest and best-known evil is always more bearable than an evil that is new and untried. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Old evils are better than new evils which are unexpected.]
Evil 154 Albert Schweitzer: Evil consists in destroying life, in injuring of it, or in thwarting its full flowering. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album. [Evil destroys, injures or thwarts life.]
Ethics
Ethics 40 Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong; morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole: probably all three doctrines must be combined to find a perfect ethics. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Ethics 174 Spinoza: For one and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Behavior can be good, bad or indifferent at the same time.]
Ethics 181 [Spinoza] builds his ethic not on altruism and the natural goodness of man, like Utopian reformers, nor on selfishness and the natural wickedness of man, like cynical conservatives, but on what he considers to be an inevitable and justifiable egoism…thinks that egoism is a necessary corollary of the supreme instinct of self-preservation; "no one ever neglects anything which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good." Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Spinoza does not build his ethic on altruism or on selfishness and the natural wickedness of man but on egoism that does that which is good for self.]
Euphemism
Euphemism 368 Eichmann organized the “Central Office for Jewish Emigration.” Bracher, The German Dictatorship
Euphemism 225 The SS bureaucracy…continued to employ Aesopian language, for example, referring to deportations to concentration camps as “having been emigrated”; and evaluation and deportation, “special treatment” and “disposition” meant extermination. Bracher, The German Dictatorship
Euphemism 728 “Retreat is not flight,” said Don Quixote, “…I confess that I retired but I did not fly; and in this I have imitated many valiant persons who have reserved themselves for better times.” Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615. [“Retreat” does not mean “flight”; those who retreated saved themselves for better times.]
Euripides
Euripides Viii …emphasis on the individual, in particular on individual suffering…. Warner, Euripides.
Euripides xv It is in showing the individuality and also the universality of suffering that Euripides deserves the title of ‘most tragic poet.’ Warner, Euripides. [Euripides was “the most tragic poet” because he showed the universality of suffering.]
Europe
Europe 863 This long descent of families and this cleaving through the ages to the same spot of ground captivates the imagination. Emerson, English Traits. [Americans are captivated by the Europeans’ remaining in the same place for centuries.]
Evaluation
Evaluation 143 The spiritual, mystical dimensions of the Church are much greater than any sociological statistics could ever possibly show. Pope John Paul II, Threshold. [Statistics can never measure the influence of the Catholic Church.]
Evaluation 186 Thomas Lincoln on being asked by his second wife which of his wives he liked best: “Oh, now Sarah, that reminds me of old John Hardin down in Kentucky who had a fine-looking pair of horses, and a neighbor coming in one day and looking at them said, “John, which horse do you like best?”…“I can’t tell; one of them kicks and the other bites and I don’t know which is wust.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Events
Events 962 Person makes event, and event person. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Fate. [People make events and events shape people.]
Evil
Evil 125 He [Hawthorne] was fascinated by the ambiguity and deceptiveness of evil. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.
Evil 101 That the evil men do lives after them is partly due to the fact that those who have reason to hate the evil most shape themselves after it and thus perpetuate it. Hoffer, The True Believer. [Evil lives on because the people who hate an evil allow themselves to copy it.]
Evil 570 [King] Arthur: When I was a young man I did something which was not just, and from it has sprung the misery of my life; do you think you can stop the consequences of a bad action, by doing good ones afterwards?…I don’t…have been trying to stopper it down with good actions, ever since, but it goes on in widening circles…will not be stoppered. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [The evil consequences of an act cannot be stopped from expanding.]
Evil 39 All evil is disharmony: between man and nature, or man and men, or man and himself. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Evil 17 No one can ever really avoid [doing] what he holds to be evil. Mencken, Minority Report. [People cannot stop themselves from doing what they perceive of as evil.]
Evil 77 Evil...is like cold, which is the privation of heat. Emerson, Divinity College Address. [Evil is the negative of something positive. ]
Evil 456 …the oldest and best-known evil is always more bearable than an evil that is new and untried. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Old evils are better than new evils which are unexpected.]
Evil 154 Albert Schweitzer: Evil consists in destroying life, in injuring of it, or in thwarting its full flowering. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album. [Evil destroys, injures or thwarts life.]
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. May 2, 2007.
Note: A bold-face statement at the conclusion of a quote is an attempt to express a wordy or convoluted quote in plain English.
Ends and Means
Ends and Means 585 The end and the means, the gamester and the game—life is made up of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to abolish the other. Emerson, Nominalist and Realist. [The effects are monstrous if ends or means demolish each other.]
Enemies
Enemies 75 These are paranoid delusions on a societal scale, explainable in part by our need for enemies. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell. [We feel a need for enemies.]
Enemies 263 Hoope: Nay, but enemies can teach us many things, if we are wise. Aristophanes, Birds.
Enlightenment
Enlightenment, Reason 53 In the Enlightenment…man was supposed to live by his reason alone, as if God did not exist. Pope John Paul II, Threshold
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm 71 Earl of Egmont: It is a melancholy thing to see how zeal for a good thing abates when the novelty is over, and when there is no pecuniary reward attending the service. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience. [Enthusiasm wanes with the loss of novelty and no promise of monetary reward. ]
Epicureanism
Epicureanism 98 Epicurus…is no Epicurean; he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and appease; …proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but…tranquility, equanimity, repose of mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [Epicurus was no Epicurean: exalted the joys of intellect, tranquility, equanimity, repose of mind.]
Epitaph
Epitaph 253 Loren on himself in a letter to his niece Athena: “Just tell her he was a guy who had his troubles, was a poor letter writer, couldn’t stand most of his relatives and died by himself and to hell with it.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Epitaph 435 Epitaph: “We loved the earth but could not stay.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Epitaph 202 Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Epitaph 408 I lingered around them, under the benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and the harebells [blue bells], listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Epitaph 1049 He reck’d the world of little prize/ ...But had the fortune in his age,/ To live a fool and die a sage. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.
Epitaph 797 Mr. Pickwick: If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm. Dickens, Pickwick.
Equality
Equality 34 Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. Hoffer, The True Believer
Equality 34 The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity; to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others…no one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. Hoffer, The True Believer. [The passion for equality is a passion for anonymity.]
Equality 530 JFK: “I do not say that all are equal in their ability, their character or their motivation…but I say they should be equal in their chance to develop their character, their motivation and their ability. Sorenson, Kennedy
Equality 286 Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man…. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Equality 227 Lincoln: Of course the Declaration signers did not intend to declare “all men equal in all respects” but they did consider all men equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Eternity
Eternity 481 Borges’ Aleph: …equivalent to eternity, where “all time—past, present, and future—coexists simultaneously. Bloom, Western Canon.
Ends and Means
Ends and Means 585 The end and the means, the gamester and the game—life is made up of the intermixture and reaction of these two amicable powers, whose marriage appears beforehand monstrous, as each denies and tends to abolish the other. Emerson, Nominalist and Realist. [The effects are monstrous if ends or means demolish each other.]
Enemies
Enemies 75 These are paranoid delusions on a societal scale, explainable in part by our need for enemies. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell. [We feel a need for enemies.]
Enemies 263 Hoope: Nay, but enemies can teach us many things, if we are wise. Aristophanes, Birds.
Enlightenment
Enlightenment, Reason 53 In the Enlightenment…man was supposed to live by his reason alone, as if God did not exist. Pope John Paul II, Threshold
Enthusiasm
Enthusiasm 71 Earl of Egmont: It is a melancholy thing to see how zeal for a good thing abates when the novelty is over, and when there is no pecuniary reward attending the service. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience. [Enthusiasm wanes with the loss of novelty and no promise of monetary reward. ]
Epicureanism
Epicureanism 98 Epicurus…is no Epicurean; he exalts the joys of intellect rather than those of sense; he warns against pleasures that excite and disturb the soul which they should rather quiet and appease; …proposes to seek not pleasure in its usual sense, but…tranquility, equanimity, repose of mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon. [Epicurus was no Epicurean: exalted the joys of intellect, tranquility, equanimity, repose of mind.]
Epitaph
Epitaph 253 Loren on himself in a letter to his niece Athena: “Just tell her he was a guy who had his troubles, was a poor letter writer, couldn’t stand most of his relatives and died by himself and to hell with it.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Epitaph 435 Epitaph: “We loved the earth but could not stay.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Epitaph 202 Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Epitaph 408 I lingered around them, under the benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and the harebells [blue bells], listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Epitaph 1049 He reck’d the world of little prize/ ...But had the fortune in his age,/ To live a fool and die a sage. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote of La Mancha. Part Two: 1615.
Epitaph 797 Mr. Pickwick: If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm. Dickens, Pickwick.
Equality
Equality 34 Those who see their lives as spoiled and wasted crave equality and fraternity more than they do freedom. Hoffer, The True Believer
Equality 34 The passion for equality is partly a passion for anonymity; to be one thread of the many which make up a tunic; one thread not distinguishable from the others…no one can then point us out, measure us against others and expose our inferiority. Hoffer, The True Believer. [The passion for equality is a passion for anonymity.]
Equality 530 JFK: “I do not say that all are equal in their ability, their character or their motivation…but I say they should be equal in their chance to develop their character, their motivation and their ability. Sorenson, Kennedy
Equality 286 Equality is to be found only in the spiritual dignity of man…. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Equality 227 Lincoln: Of course the Declaration signers did not intend to declare “all men equal in all respects” but they did consider all men equal in “certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Eternity
Eternity 481 Borges’ Aleph: …equivalent to eternity, where “all time—past, present, and future—coexists simultaneously. Bloom, Western Canon.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. May 1, 2007
Efficiency
Efficiency 7 It is estimated that if all redundant passages were eliminated the whole concert time of two hours could be reduced to twenty minutes, and there would be no need for an interval. Anonymous. A Random Walk in Science. [If all redundancy were removed from a concert it would take twenty minutes instead of two hours.]
Ego and Egotism
Ego 205 We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves…. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [We all think that the world is for us alone; that is we are born with moral stupidity.]
Egotism 411 …a man never speaks of himself without loss: his condemnation of himself is always credited, his praise of himself discredited. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Einstein
Einstein 2 It is not surprising therefore that many a college graduate still thinks of Einstein as a kind of mathematical surrealist rather than as the discoverer of certain cosmic laws of immense importance in man’s slow struggle to understand physical reality. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein.
Einstein 53 E = mc2: …energy contained in any particle of matter is equal to the mass of that body multiplied by the square of the velocity of light…extraordinary relationship becomes more vivid when its terms are translated into concrete values: i.e., one kilogram of coal (about two pounds), if converted entirely into energy, would yield 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity or as much as all the power plants in the U.S. could generate by running steadily for two months. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [E=MC2 means that if matter could be converted to energy that energy could be incredibly productive.]
Einstein 86 In the Einstein universe there are no straight lines, there are only great circles. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [The Einstein universe has no straight lines but only circles.]
Emerson
Emerson 1076 The music that can deepest reach/ And cure all ill, is cordial speech. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Considerations by the Way.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson 291 ...she wrote lyrical meditations...while practicing an art of singular economy. Bloom, Western Canon. [Dickinson wrote lyrical meditations very concisely.]
Emily Dickinson 291 What her critics almost always underestimate is her startling intellectual complexity. Bloom, Western Canon.
Emily Dickinson 308 Dickinson’s way...favors questioning over interpretation. Bloom, Western Canon.
Emotion
Emotion 14 As John Buchan wrote of a friend in John Kennedy’s favorite book, Pilgrim’s Way, “He disliked [shows of] emotion, not because he felt lightly but because he felt deeply.” Sorenson, Kennedy
Emotion 151 Catherine: Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words?
Emotion 669 Despair and penitence are two very different things. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Emotion 85 Giovanni Pisano’s relief in Pistoia of the Massacre of the Innocents: I did not weep, so much of stone had I become within. Clark, Civilization. [I did not weep because my heart had become stone.]
Emotion 183 Spinoza: “An emotion can neither be hindered nor removed except by a contrary and stronger emotion.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Only a stronger and contrary emotion will overcome another emotion.]
Emotion 370 ...and suddenly she reached her hands upward in an ecstasy of life and strength and gladness: “O God,” [Nan] said, “I thank thee for my future.” Jewett, A Country Doctor.
Emotion 1058 …an emotion more delightful than he had often felt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it should at once perish in his grasp. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [He felt the emotion strongly, but did not analyze it because he was afraid he would lose it.]
Emotion and reason 183 Spinoza knows that as passion without reason is blind, reason without passion is dead. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Emotions 180 Spinoza: A passion or an emotion is bad or good not in itself, but only as it decreases or enhances our power. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia 117 Encarta includes 26,000 topics with 9 million words of text, 8 hours of sounds, 7,0000 photographs and illustrations, 800 maps, 250 interactive charts and tables, and 100 animations and video clips...costs less than $100 [and comes on a wafer thin disk about six inches in diameter]. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Efficiency 7 It is estimated that if all redundant passages were eliminated the whole concert time of two hours could be reduced to twenty minutes, and there would be no need for an interval. Anonymous. A Random Walk in Science. [If all redundancy were removed from a concert it would take twenty minutes instead of two hours.]
Ego and Egotism
Ego 205 We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves…. George Eliot, Middlemarch. [We all think that the world is for us alone; that is we are born with moral stupidity.]
Egotism 411 …a man never speaks of himself without loss: his condemnation of himself is always credited, his praise of himself discredited. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Einstein
Einstein 2 It is not surprising therefore that many a college graduate still thinks of Einstein as a kind of mathematical surrealist rather than as the discoverer of certain cosmic laws of immense importance in man’s slow struggle to understand physical reality. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein.
Einstein 53 E = mc2: …energy contained in any particle of matter is equal to the mass of that body multiplied by the square of the velocity of light…extraordinary relationship becomes more vivid when its terms are translated into concrete values: i.e., one kilogram of coal (about two pounds), if converted entirely into energy, would yield 25 billion kilowatt hours of electricity or as much as all the power plants in the U.S. could generate by running steadily for two months. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [E=MC2 means that if matter could be converted to energy that energy could be incredibly productive.]
Einstein 86 In the Einstein universe there are no straight lines, there are only great circles. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein [The Einstein universe has no straight lines but only circles.]
Emerson
Emerson 1076 The music that can deepest reach/ And cure all ill, is cordial speech. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Considerations by the Way.
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson 291 ...she wrote lyrical meditations...while practicing an art of singular economy. Bloom, Western Canon. [Dickinson wrote lyrical meditations very concisely.]
Emily Dickinson 291 What her critics almost always underestimate is her startling intellectual complexity. Bloom, Western Canon.
Emily Dickinson 308 Dickinson’s way...favors questioning over interpretation. Bloom, Western Canon.
Emotion
Emotion 14 As John Buchan wrote of a friend in John Kennedy’s favorite book, Pilgrim’s Way, “He disliked [shows of] emotion, not because he felt lightly but because he felt deeply.” Sorenson, Kennedy
Emotion 151 Catherine: Why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words?
Emotion 669 Despair and penitence are two very different things. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Emotion 85 Giovanni Pisano’s relief in Pistoia of the Massacre of the Innocents: I did not weep, so much of stone had I become within. Clark, Civilization. [I did not weep because my heart had become stone.]
Emotion 183 Spinoza: “An emotion can neither be hindered nor removed except by a contrary and stronger emotion.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Only a stronger and contrary emotion will overcome another emotion.]
Emotion 370 ...and suddenly she reached her hands upward in an ecstasy of life and strength and gladness: “O God,” [Nan] said, “I thank thee for my future.” Jewett, A Country Doctor.
Emotion 1058 …an emotion more delightful than he had often felt before, but which he forbore to analyze, lest, if he seized it, it should at once perish in his grasp. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun. [He felt the emotion strongly, but did not analyze it because he was afraid he would lose it.]
Emotion and reason 183 Spinoza knows that as passion without reason is blind, reason without passion is dead. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Emotions 180 Spinoza: A passion or an emotion is bad or good not in itself, but only as it decreases or enhances our power. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia 117 Encarta includes 26,000 topics with 9 million words of text, 8 hours of sounds, 7,0000 photographs and illustrations, 800 maps, 250 interactive charts and tables, and 100 animations and video clips...costs less than $100 [and comes on a wafer thin disk about six inches in diameter]. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. April 30, 2007.
Note: Several of my readers have said that some of the quotes are convoluted and/or verbose. In either case they are hard to read. As a service to my readers, I will add at the end of difficult quotes a plainly written statement of the basic idea. Hope this helps. Rays.
Economics
Economics 383 Spencer: Economic relationships are so different from political relationships, and so much more complex, that no government could regulate them all without…an enslaving bureaucracy. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Regulating economics would produce an enslaving bureaucracy.]
Economics 383 Spencer: Economic relations must be left to the automatic self-adjustment…of supply and demand; what society most wants it will pay for most heavily. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Economics is essentially supply and demand.]
Economics and inflation 722 Soon they would be saying in Richmond, “You take your money to market in a market basket and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Civil War inflation.]
Ecumenism
Ecumenism 154 Mutual respect is a prerequisite for authentic ecumenism. Pope John Paul II, Threshold
Education
Education 342 “We must never accept utility as the sole reason for education.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Education 267 Sir Eric Ashby: “To train young people in the dialectic between orthodoxy and dissent is the unique contribution which universities make to society.” Eiseley, The Star Thrower. [The purpose of a university education is to learn to deal with orthodoxy and dissent.]
Education 197 All this information, however, is not going to solve the serious problems facing many public schools today: budget cuts, violence, drugs, high dropout rates, dangerous neighborhoods, teachers more concerned about survival than education. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 197 The problem of America’s schools are not insurmountable, just extremely complicated. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 197 Even today, for every disastrous public school there are dozens of successful ones you don’t read about. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 919 Robert Kennedy…laid emphasis on pre-school education, pointing out that the formative years of a child’s life were before the age of six or seven and that many children from poor families arrived in the first grade so far behind that they could never catch up. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days
Education 12 …Beatrice O’ Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again, a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about…. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise. [A kind of education that looked upon things and people with either contempt and charm.]
Education 250 If he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically, freed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices and sentimentalisms…. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.
Education 553 JFK: “Any educated citizen who seeks to subvert the law, to suppress freedom, or to subject other human beings to acts that are less than human, degrades his heritage, ignores his learning and betrays his obligations.” Sorenson, Kennedy.
Education 7 “Idealism” . . . is now the fashion in our schools and colleges, where all aesthetic and most intellectual standards are being abandoned in the name of social harmony and the remedying of historical injustice. Bloom, Western Canon. [The purpose of a college education today is social harmony and remedying historical injustice, not scholarship.]
Education 483 Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees…. Thoreau, Walden.
Education 237 He [Heathcliff] appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him [Hareton] a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights. [The education of a brute.]
Education 21 Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school--not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems--and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity...[but] where girls might be sent to be out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Austen, Emma [A school for girls that did not inculcate morality and refinement, but which kept the girls out of the way of their families, with little education to disturb the status quo.]
Education 12 I am aware I may here be reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso’s infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley. [Education with games does not produce serious education.]
Education 12 It may…be subject of serious consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study…. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley. [Those who acquire instruction through amusement will not be willing or able to study.]
Education 366 You can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically—she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [Experience is the only method for learning to walk,]
Education 104 …wince involuntarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled into our mind the first principles of education…was wont to poke our juvenile head occasionally by way of adjusting the confusion of ideas in which we were generally involved. Dickens, Sketches by Boz. [The old school marms used knuckles on the head to unconfuse one's ideas.]
Education 12 The New-England meeting-house, like the synagogue on which it was consciously modeled, was primarily a place of instruction. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience
Education 145 Rev. Hugh Jones: They [Americans] are more inclinable to read men by business and conversation, than to dive into books, and are for the most part only desirous of learning what is absolutely necessary, in the shortest and best method. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience [Americans are inclined to read men and conversation rather than books.]
Education 171 In Europe a “liberal” education, which would supposedly liberate a man from the narrow bounds of his time and place, was the property of an exclusive few. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience [A 'liberal education' was designed to liberate one from the bounds of time and place.]
Education 304 English visitors found it hard to believe that a prosperous ruling class would rather learn directly from experience than from books. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience. [Europe was skeptical of Americans' learning directly from experience rather than from books. ]
Education 162 That is, with due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to communicate freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old books. Nabokov, Lolita. [We want girls to be lively rather than stuck in musty books.]
Education 310 ...early example of the American identification of learning with self-improvement. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience
Education 161 ...the institution might turn out to be one of those where girls are taught...”not to spell very well, but to smell very well.” Nabokov, Lolita.
Education 72 Whoever needs more than five hours of sleep should not study medicine. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).
Education 161 Why is it that doctors see only what they have learned to see? Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Doctors do what they have learned, not what they see.]
Education 497 Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Education 497 …it was not for the sake of studying the classics they introduced the Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the intelligence. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Education 381 “Part of our job is to take kids with sixth-grade educations and prepare them to go to MIT.” Wiliam Watley, Pastor of St. James Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, New Jersey. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.
Education 388 Schools in urban America are beset by multiple problems: students in poor health, streets filled with danger, buildings in disrepair, families without enough parental time and less take-home pay, teachers who are overworked and called upon to ensure safety as well as teach mathematics and history, administrators who become detached from the crisis and make holding on to a paycheck more important than improving the school, state legislators who mandate higher test scores without providing the needed resources and thereby force pragmatic principals to sacrifice genuine education and teach for the test, and parents who hate sending their children into a cauldron of drugs and blood but don’t have any good alternative. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [The many problems with today's urban schools.]
Education 399 The zest for lifetime learning will be the entrepreneurial energy of a knowledge-based society. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [Knowledge will be so prevalent that people will want to go on learning for a life time.]
Education viii …the function of the professional teacher was clear…to mediate between the specialist and the nation; to learn the specialist’s language…and find for new truths old terms that all literate people might understand. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [One role of a teacher is to mediate between the specialist and generally literate people.]
Education xv …we might build up in America an audience fit to listen to geniuses, and therefore ready to produce them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [We need an audience who can listen to geniuses in order to produce them.]
Education xxv We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov—“one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxv …we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxviii Leonardo: “The noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxviii Emerson: In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [Every person is my pupil.]
Education 26 ...studies are not to be forced upon an unwilling mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Education 26 The elements of instruction...should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion; for a free man should be a free man too in the acquisition of knowledge. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [Children cannot learn by compulsion.]
Education 26 Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [What one learns by compulsion is not learned.]
Education 111 F. Bacon: To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation...crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.
Education 156 It was in accord with the Hebrew canon that every student should acquire some manual art. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Education 165 Spinoza: [Christ] accommodated himself to the comprehension of the people…and most often taught by parables. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Education 194 Spinoza: Academies that are founded at the public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Schools don't encourage man's natural abilities; they constrain them.]
Education 521 Following up on Spencer’s demand for more science and less literature, in education, Dewey added that even the science should not be book-learning, but should come to the pupil from the actual practice of useful occupations. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [You can't learn best from books; you learn best from experience.]
Education 521 Dewey: In an industrial society the school should be a miniature workshop and a miniature community...should teach through practice, and through trial and error. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [People should learn in school as people learn in the workplace.]
Education 521 Dewey: ...education must be re-conceived, not as merely a preparation for maturity...but as a continuous growth of the mind and a continuous illumination of life. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [Education should not be a preparation for learning, but should engage in actual production.]
Education 521 Dewey: Real education comes after we leave school; and there is no reason why it should stop before our death. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey.
Education 523 Dewey: ...mind and life are to be understood not in theological but in biological terms, as an organ or an organism in an environment, acted upon and reacting, molded and molding. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [Mind and life should grow through experience.]
Education 133 Whenever a given school system turns out to be relatively rational and effective, no one remembers the [school] ma'ams who make it so, for all the credit and glory are hogged by the super-gogues at the head of it. Mencken, Minority Report. [Successful schools do not praise the teachers, but the administrators.]
Education 129 Faulkner: People learn only by error. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.
Education 193 …and in such weather as this I think one day in the fields is worth five in the school house. Jewett, A Country Doctor. [School houses shut children away from life.]
Education 198 M.L. Robinson: Be encouraged that what you know so well others know not at all. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.
Education 18 Johnson on Mr. Hunter, the headmaster: He used…to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing, as for neglecting to know it. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [He beat us for not understanding something as for not bothering to learn something.]
Education 283 Johnson: Sir (said he) a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [People desire knowledge.]
Education 1020 You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the school boys who educate him. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Culture. [The pupils educate the teachers.]
Education 1191 …this deep sleep of the higher faculties of man, coexists with a great abundance of what are called the means of learning, great activity of book making and of formal teaching. Emerson, Uncollected Prose. [Our minds are in a deep sleep notwithstanding that we know much from books and formal teaching.]
Education 594 It was complained…we are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. Emerson, New England Reformers. [We learn words, but nothing real.]
Education 599 [Our education system]…is a system of despair. Emerson, New England Reformers.
Education 599 Men do not believe in the power of education. Emerson, New England Reformers.
Education 600 …the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. Emerson, New England Reformers. [Scholars did not use knowledge to help people but only to accomplish their own selfish goals.]
Education 629 …all are teachers and pupils in turn. Emerson, Representative Men: Uses of Great Men.
Education 419 Each mind has its own method. Emerson, Intellect.
Education 385 Experimental college at the University of Wisconsin: There were no classes as such, the emphasis…on education, on opening the mind…the first year…spent studying nothing but Greek civilization, the second nothing but nineteenth-century American civilization and comparing the values of the two civilizations. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. [Example of a reformed university education: comparing Greek and American society.]
Education 38 It is not a mind, it is not a body, that we are training; it is a man, and we must not divide him into two parts; and, as Plato says, we must not train one without the other, but drive them abreast like two horses harnessed to the same pole. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Both mind and body must be trained together.]
Education 51 …I believe I should have brought nothing away from school but a hatred of books, as almost all our noblemen do. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Education 221 A good education changes the judgment and way of living…. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Education 418 For being more learned they are none the less fools. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Greater learning can sometimes produce bigger fools.]
Education 12 In high school we obediently went through brief courses in elementary physics and chemistry, without the faintest glimmering ever percolating into our minds about the rigor and the glories of the scientific method, the long heart-breaking struggle of men to establish it against institutionalized superstition, or how and why it made our age fundamentally different, more wonderful and more terrible, than all preceding ages. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [In high school we did not really learn the nature of learning.]
Education 487 Their [the American soldiers’] education had given them the ability to read and write and follow a map; it had not given them intellectual curiosity and without this they could not be said to have received any education. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [Learning to read and write without curiosity produced almost no education.]
Education 290 Shame, despair, solitude…had been her [Hester’s] teachers…had made her strong…. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
Education 271 Mr. Weller on Sam: “I took a good deal o’ pain with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was very young, and shift for his-self...the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.” Dickens, Pickwick.
Education and society 524 Dewey: The first distinguishing characteristic of thinking is facing the facts--inquiry, minute and extensive scrutinizing, observation. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey.
Education change 254 In a changing world, education is the best preparation for being able to adapt. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education institution individual 204 The highway [i.e. Internet] will alter the focus of education from the institution to the individual. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education learning 204 The ultimate goal will be changed from getting a diploma to enjoying life-long learning. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 184 Some fear that technology will dehumanize formal education. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 186 Preschoolers familiar with cellular telephones, pagers, and personal computers enter kindergartens where chalkboards and overhead projectors represent the state of the art. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 186 Reed Hundt, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission: …”there are thousands of buildings in this country with millions of people in them who have no telephones, no cable TV, and no reasonable prospect of broadband services…they are called schools. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 191 Her ability to influence what she sees on the screen—to answer the question, “What happens if I click here?”—keeps her curiosity high. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 192 I’ve always believed most people have more intelligence and curiosity than current information tools encourage them to use. [education and technology] Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 196 Testing will become a positive part of the learning process: a mistake won’t call forth a reprimand; it will trigger the system to help the student overcome this misunderstanding. Gates, The Road Ahead. [Real testing helps students understand their mistakes.]
Education technology 198 The good teachers of the future…will use technology as a starting point or an aid. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Educational leadership 133 The [super-gogues] have incommoded the schoolma'am much more than they have aided her, and when she succeeds at her dismal task it is usually in spite of them, not because of them. Mencken, Minority Report. [Administrators get in the way of good teachers.]
Economics
Economics 383 Spencer: Economic relationships are so different from political relationships, and so much more complex, that no government could regulate them all without…an enslaving bureaucracy. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Regulating economics would produce an enslaving bureaucracy.]
Economics 383 Spencer: Economic relations must be left to the automatic self-adjustment…of supply and demand; what society most wants it will pay for most heavily. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer. [Economics is essentially supply and demand.]
Economics and inflation 722 Soon they would be saying in Richmond, “You take your money to market in a market basket and bring home what you buy in your pocketbook.” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. [Civil War inflation.]
Ecumenism
Ecumenism 154 Mutual respect is a prerequisite for authentic ecumenism. Pope John Paul II, Threshold
Education
Education 342 “We must never accept utility as the sole reason for education.” Christianson, Fox at the Wood’s Edge: Loren Eiseley
Education 267 Sir Eric Ashby: “To train young people in the dialectic between orthodoxy and dissent is the unique contribution which universities make to society.” Eiseley, The Star Thrower. [The purpose of a university education is to learn to deal with orthodoxy and dissent.]
Education 197 All this information, however, is not going to solve the serious problems facing many public schools today: budget cuts, violence, drugs, high dropout rates, dangerous neighborhoods, teachers more concerned about survival than education. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 197 The problem of America’s schools are not insurmountable, just extremely complicated. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 197 Even today, for every disastrous public school there are dozens of successful ones you don’t read about. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education 919 Robert Kennedy…laid emphasis on pre-school education, pointing out that the formative years of a child’s life were before the age of six or seven and that many children from poor families arrived in the first grade so far behind that they could never catch up. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days
Education 12 …Beatrice O’ Hara absorbed the sort of education that will be quite impossible ever again, a tutelage measured by the number of things and people one could be contemptuous of and charming about…. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise. [A kind of education that looked upon things and people with either contempt and charm.]
Education 250 If he can be educated to think clearly, concisely, and logically, freed of his habit of taking refuge in platitudes and prejudices and sentimentalisms…. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.
Education 553 JFK: “Any educated citizen who seeks to subvert the law, to suppress freedom, or to subject other human beings to acts that are less than human, degrades his heritage, ignores his learning and betrays his obligations.” Sorenson, Kennedy.
Education 7 “Idealism” . . . is now the fashion in our schools and colleges, where all aesthetic and most intellectual standards are being abandoned in the name of social harmony and the remedying of historical injustice. Bloom, Western Canon. [The purpose of a college education today is social harmony and remedying historical injustice, not scholarship.]
Education 483 Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees…. Thoreau, Walden.
Education 237 He [Heathcliff] appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him [Hareton] a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights. [The education of a brute.]
Education 21 Mrs. Goddard was the mistress of a school--not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems--and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity...[but] where girls might be sent to be out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Austen, Emma [A school for girls that did not inculcate morality and refinement, but which kept the girls out of the way of their families, with little education to disturb the status quo.]
Education 12 I am aware I may here be reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso’s infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley. [Education with games does not produce serious education.]
Education 12 It may…be subject of serious consideration, whether those who are accustomed only to acquire instruction through the medium of amusement, may not be brought to reject that which approaches under the aspect of study…. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley. [Those who acquire instruction through amusement will not be willing or able to study.]
Education 366 You can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically—she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. T. H. White, The Once and Future King. [Experience is the only method for learning to walk,]
Education 104 …wince involuntarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled into our mind the first principles of education…was wont to poke our juvenile head occasionally by way of adjusting the confusion of ideas in which we were generally involved. Dickens, Sketches by Boz. [The old school marms used knuckles on the head to unconfuse one's ideas.]
Education 12 The New-England meeting-house, like the synagogue on which it was consciously modeled, was primarily a place of instruction. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience
Education 145 Rev. Hugh Jones: They [Americans] are more inclinable to read men by business and conversation, than to dive into books, and are for the most part only desirous of learning what is absolutely necessary, in the shortest and best method. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience [Americans are inclined to read men and conversation rather than books.]
Education 171 In Europe a “liberal” education, which would supposedly liberate a man from the narrow bounds of his time and place, was the property of an exclusive few. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience [A 'liberal education' was designed to liberate one from the bounds of time and place.]
Education 304 English visitors found it hard to believe that a prosperous ruling class would rather learn directly from experience than from books. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience. [Europe was skeptical of Americans' learning directly from experience rather than from books. ]
Education 162 That is, with due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to communicate freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old books. Nabokov, Lolita. [We want girls to be lively rather than stuck in musty books.]
Education 310 ...early example of the American identification of learning with self-improvement. Boorstin, The Americans: Colonial Experience
Education 161 ...the institution might turn out to be one of those where girls are taught...”not to spell very well, but to smell very well.” Nabokov, Lolita.
Education 72 Whoever needs more than five hours of sleep should not study medicine. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).
Education 161 Why is it that doctors see only what they have learned to see? Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud). [Doctors do what they have learned, not what they see.]
Education 497 Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Education 497 …it was not for the sake of studying the classics they introduced the Latin, but solely as a police measure, to stupefy the intelligence. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.
Education 381 “Part of our job is to take kids with sixth-grade educations and prepare them to go to MIT.” Wiliam Watley, Pastor of St. James Methodist Episcopal Church, Newark, New Jersey. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past.
Education 388 Schools in urban America are beset by multiple problems: students in poor health, streets filled with danger, buildings in disrepair, families without enough parental time and less take-home pay, teachers who are overworked and called upon to ensure safety as well as teach mathematics and history, administrators who become detached from the crisis and make holding on to a paycheck more important than improving the school, state legislators who mandate higher test scores without providing the needed resources and thereby force pragmatic principals to sacrifice genuine education and teach for the test, and parents who hate sending their children into a cauldron of drugs and blood but don’t have any good alternative. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [The many problems with today's urban schools.]
Education 399 The zest for lifetime learning will be the entrepreneurial energy of a knowledge-based society. Bradley, Time Present, Time Past. [Knowledge will be so prevalent that people will want to go on learning for a life time.]
Education viii …the function of the professional teacher was clear…to mediate between the specialist and the nation; to learn the specialist’s language…and find for new truths old terms that all literate people might understand. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [One role of a teacher is to mediate between the specialist and generally literate people.]
Education xv …we might build up in America an audience fit to listen to geniuses, and therefore ready to produce them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [We need an audience who can listen to geniuses in order to produce them.]
Education xxv We are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov—“one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxv …we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxviii Leonardo: “The noblest pleasure, the joy of understanding.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy.
Education xxviii Emerson: In every man there is something wherein I may learn of him, and in that I am his pupil. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy. [Every person is my pupil.]
Education 26 ...studies are not to be forced upon an unwilling mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato.
Education 26 The elements of instruction...should be presented to the mind in childhood, but not with any compulsion; for a free man should be a free man too in the acquisition of knowledge. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [Children cannot learn by compulsion.]
Education 26 Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Plato. [What one learns by compulsion is not learned.]
Education 111 F. Bacon: To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation...crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Francis Bacon.
Education 156 It was in accord with the Hebrew canon that every student should acquire some manual art. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Education 165 Spinoza: [Christ] accommodated himself to the comprehension of the people…and most often taught by parables. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.
Education 194 Spinoza: Academies that are founded at the public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men’s natural abilities as to restrain them. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza. [Schools don't encourage man's natural abilities; they constrain them.]
Education 521 Following up on Spencer’s demand for more science and less literature, in education, Dewey added that even the science should not be book-learning, but should come to the pupil from the actual practice of useful occupations. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [You can't learn best from books; you learn best from experience.]
Education 521 Dewey: In an industrial society the school should be a miniature workshop and a miniature community...should teach through practice, and through trial and error. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [People should learn in school as people learn in the workplace.]
Education 521 Dewey: ...education must be re-conceived, not as merely a preparation for maturity...but as a continuous growth of the mind and a continuous illumination of life. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [Education should not be a preparation for learning, but should engage in actual production.]
Education 521 Dewey: Real education comes after we leave school; and there is no reason why it should stop before our death. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey.
Education 523 Dewey: ...mind and life are to be understood not in theological but in biological terms, as an organ or an organism in an environment, acted upon and reacting, molded and molding. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey. [Mind and life should grow through experience.]
Education 133 Whenever a given school system turns out to be relatively rational and effective, no one remembers the [school] ma'ams who make it so, for all the credit and glory are hogged by the super-gogues at the head of it. Mencken, Minority Report. [Successful schools do not praise the teachers, but the administrators.]
Education 129 Faulkner: People learn only by error. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.
Education 193 …and in such weather as this I think one day in the fields is worth five in the school house. Jewett, A Country Doctor. [School houses shut children away from life.]
Education 198 M.L. Robinson: Be encouraged that what you know so well others know not at all. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.
Education 18 Johnson on Mr. Hunter, the headmaster: He used…to beat us unmercifully; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing, as for neglecting to know it. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [He beat us for not understanding something as for not bothering to learn something.]
Education 283 Johnson: Sir (said he) a desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind. Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1. [People desire knowledge.]
Education 1020 You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ‘tis the school boys who educate him. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Culture. [The pupils educate the teachers.]
Education 1191 …this deep sleep of the higher faculties of man, coexists with a great abundance of what are called the means of learning, great activity of book making and of formal teaching. Emerson, Uncollected Prose. [Our minds are in a deep sleep notwithstanding that we know much from books and formal teaching.]
Education 594 It was complained…we are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing. Emerson, New England Reformers. [We learn words, but nothing real.]
Education 599 [Our education system]…is a system of despair. Emerson, New England Reformers.
Education 599 Men do not believe in the power of education. Emerson, New England Reformers.
Education 600 …the scholar was not raised by the sacred thoughts amongst which he dwelt, but used them to selfish ends. Emerson, New England Reformers. [Scholars did not use knowledge to help people but only to accomplish their own selfish goals.]
Education 629 …all are teachers and pupils in turn. Emerson, Representative Men: Uses of Great Men.
Education 419 Each mind has its own method. Emerson, Intellect.
Education 385 Experimental college at the University of Wisconsin: There were no classes as such, the emphasis…on education, on opening the mind…the first year…spent studying nothing but Greek civilization, the second nothing but nineteenth-century American civilization and comparing the values of the two civilizations. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. [Example of a reformed university education: comparing Greek and American society.]
Education 38 It is not a mind, it is not a body, that we are training; it is a man, and we must not divide him into two parts; and, as Plato says, we must not train one without the other, but drive them abreast like two horses harnessed to the same pole. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Both mind and body must be trained together.]
Education 51 …I believe I should have brought nothing away from school but a hatred of books, as almost all our noblemen do. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Education 221 A good education changes the judgment and way of living…. Montaigne, Selected Essays.
Education 418 For being more learned they are none the less fools. Montaigne, Selected Essays. [Greater learning can sometimes produce bigger fools.]
Education 12 In high school we obediently went through brief courses in elementary physics and chemistry, without the faintest glimmering ever percolating into our minds about the rigor and the glories of the scientific method, the long heart-breaking struggle of men to establish it against institutionalized superstition, or how and why it made our age fundamentally different, more wonderful and more terrible, than all preceding ages. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [In high school we did not really learn the nature of learning.]
Education 487 Their [the American soldiers’] education had given them the ability to read and write and follow a map; it had not given them intellectual curiosity and without this they could not be said to have received any education. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream. [Learning to read and write without curiosity produced almost no education.]
Education 290 Shame, despair, solitude…had been her [Hester’s] teachers…had made her strong…. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.
Education 271 Mr. Weller on Sam: “I took a good deal o’ pain with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was very young, and shift for his-self...the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.” Dickens, Pickwick.
Education and society 524 Dewey: The first distinguishing characteristic of thinking is facing the facts--inquiry, minute and extensive scrutinizing, observation. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, John Dewey.
Education change 254 In a changing world, education is the best preparation for being able to adapt. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education institution individual 204 The highway [i.e. Internet] will alter the focus of education from the institution to the individual. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education learning 204 The ultimate goal will be changed from getting a diploma to enjoying life-long learning. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 184 Some fear that technology will dehumanize formal education. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 186 Preschoolers familiar with cellular telephones, pagers, and personal computers enter kindergartens where chalkboards and overhead projectors represent the state of the art. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 186 Reed Hundt, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission: …”there are thousands of buildings in this country with millions of people in them who have no telephones, no cable TV, and no reasonable prospect of broadband services…they are called schools. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 191 Her ability to influence what she sees on the screen—to answer the question, “What happens if I click here?”—keeps her curiosity high. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 192 I’ve always believed most people have more intelligence and curiosity than current information tools encourage them to use. [education and technology] Gates, The Road Ahead.
Education technology 196 Testing will become a positive part of the learning process: a mistake won’t call forth a reprimand; it will trigger the system to help the student overcome this misunderstanding. Gates, The Road Ahead. [Real testing helps students understand their mistakes.]
Education technology 198 The good teachers of the future…will use technology as a starting point or an aid. Gates, The Road Ahead.
Educational leadership 133 The [super-gogues] have incommoded the schoolma'am much more than they have aided her, and when she succeeds at her dismal task it is usually in spite of them, not because of them. Mencken, Minority Report. [Administrators get in the way of good teachers.]
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. April 29, 2007
Drugs and Alcohol
Drugs and alcohol 229 Conrad Aiken: This [hashish and peyote], as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook
Dueling
Dueling 296 ...although we do not now quarrel according to the modes and figures of Caranza or Vincent Saviola, no one knew better than Fergus that there must be some decent pretext for a mortal duel...you may challenge a man for treading on your corn in a crowd or for pushing you up to the wall, or for taking your seat in the theater; but the modern code of honor will not permit you to found a quarrel upon your right of compelling a man to continue addresses to a female relative, which the fair lady has already refused. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley.
Duels 138 A story arose and lived on that when first, as the challenged party, he had his choice of weapons, he [Lincoln] said, “How about cow dung at five paces?” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Dullness
Dullness 280 Johnson: “Why, Sir, … is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.” Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.
Earth
Earth 29 …the earth, far from being at rest is whirling through space in a giddy and highly complicated fashion…its daily rotation about its axis at the rate of 1000 miles an hour, and its annual revolution about the sun at the rate of 20 miles a second…. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
Earth 87 ...the radius of the universe is 35 billion light years or 210,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 miles. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
Ecology
Ecology 234 Thoreau, as is evidenced by his final journals, had labored to lay the foundations of a then unnamed science—ecology. Eiseley, The Star Thrower
Ecology xii [Ted Browning suggested]: Instead of first identifying the best areas for development, we can identify areas that are most important for conservation of natural processes, those of special and innate landscape character, and those suitable for modification to parks, playgrounds, green space, and so forth. H. Wm. Sellers, Director, Brandywine Conservancy. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 11 Somebody once said that developers often name their developments after what has been destroyed by the development...Deerfield; Quail Hill, Darlington Woods. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 26 ...a beauty that results when living organisms evolve into near-perfect harmony with the soil, the rocks, the water, the other creatures that make their world--with their environment. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 68 All things are connected--one of ecology’s bedrock concepts. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 70 Chief Stealth: Man did not weave the web of life/ He is merely one strand in it,/ Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 94 Chief Stealth: "If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit." Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 129 …the environmental breakdown is a crisis of spirit, dealing with the fundamental spiritual question: what should be the relationship of humans to earth…. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 129 The native Americans perceived of the great spirit as a kind of cosmic connective tissue stretching through all creation, binding all parts into a fabric of spiritual harmony. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 130 Chief Stealth, a native American philosopher of the Duwamish Tribe in Washington State said this: …every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every…humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people." Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 135 Wendell Berry: We go to the wilderness to be restored…the survival of wilderness--of places that we do not change--is necessary…wildernesses are places where nature is given a free hand and where people go only as guests…function as sacred groves, places we respect and leave alone. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 138 For the sun is part of us as we are part of it: the heat that makes our normal temperature 98.6 is solar heat, transformed and made available to us by green plants. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Drugs and alcohol 229 Conrad Aiken: This [hashish and peyote], as we find in alcohol, is an escape from awareness, a cheat, a momentary substitution, and in the end a destruction of it. Plimpton, ed. The Writer’s Chapbook
Dueling
Dueling 296 ...although we do not now quarrel according to the modes and figures of Caranza or Vincent Saviola, no one knew better than Fergus that there must be some decent pretext for a mortal duel...you may challenge a man for treading on your corn in a crowd or for pushing you up to the wall, or for taking your seat in the theater; but the modern code of honor will not permit you to found a quarrel upon your right of compelling a man to continue addresses to a female relative, which the fair lady has already refused. Sir Walter Scott, Waverley.
Duels 138 A story arose and lived on that when first, as the challenged party, he had his choice of weapons, he [Lincoln] said, “How about cow dung at five paces?” Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years
Dullness
Dullness 280 Johnson: “Why, Sir, … is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.” Boswell, Life of Johnson, Vol. 1.
Earth
Earth 29 …the earth, far from being at rest is whirling through space in a giddy and highly complicated fashion…its daily rotation about its axis at the rate of 1000 miles an hour, and its annual revolution about the sun at the rate of 20 miles a second…. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
Earth 87 ...the radius of the universe is 35 billion light years or 210,000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 miles. Barnett, The Universe and Dr. Einstein
Ecology
Ecology 234 Thoreau, as is evidenced by his final journals, had labored to lay the foundations of a then unnamed science—ecology. Eiseley, The Star Thrower
Ecology xii [Ted Browning suggested]: Instead of first identifying the best areas for development, we can identify areas that are most important for conservation of natural processes, those of special and innate landscape character, and those suitable for modification to parks, playgrounds, green space, and so forth. H. Wm. Sellers, Director, Brandywine Conservancy. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 11 Somebody once said that developers often name their developments after what has been destroyed by the development...Deerfield; Quail Hill, Darlington Woods. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 26 ...a beauty that results when living organisms evolve into near-perfect harmony with the soil, the rocks, the water, the other creatures that make their world--with their environment. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 68 All things are connected--one of ecology’s bedrock concepts. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 70 Chief Stealth: Man did not weave the web of life/ He is merely one strand in it,/ Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 94 Chief Stealth: "If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit." Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 129 …the environmental breakdown is a crisis of spirit, dealing with the fundamental spiritual question: what should be the relationship of humans to earth…. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 129 The native Americans perceived of the great spirit as a kind of cosmic connective tissue stretching through all creation, binding all parts into a fabric of spiritual harmony. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 130 Chief Stealth, a native American philosopher of the Duwamish Tribe in Washington State said this: …every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every…humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people." Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 135 Wendell Berry: We go to the wilderness to be restored…the survival of wilderness--of places that we do not change--is necessary…wildernesses are places where nature is given a free hand and where people go only as guests…function as sacred groves, places we respect and leave alone. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Ecology 138 For the sun is part of us as we are part of it: the heat that makes our normal temperature 98.6 is solar heat, transformed and made available to us by green plants. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Perspectives on Ideas. April 28, 2007.
Dreaming
Dreaming 831 I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circumstances of which utterly vanished at the moment when they converged to some tragical catastrophe, and thus grew too powerful for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Dreams 94 Catherine: I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me, ever after, and changed my ideas…. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Dreams 345 What an air of probability sometimes runs through a dream…and at others, what a heap of absurdities it is. Austen, Emma
Dreams 306 Seven hundred years ago—or it may have been fifteen hundred according to Malory’s notation—people took dreams as seriously as the psychiatrists do today. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.
Dreams 1394 Just as in a dream everything may be unreal, incoherent, and contradictory except the feeling behind the dream…. Tolstoi, War and Peace
Dreams 188 As in a dream a man chasing another/ cannot catch him, nor can he in flight/ escape from his pursuer…. Homer, Iliad.
Drill and Routine
Drill and Routine 983 The second substitute for temperament is drill, the power of use and routine. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Power.
Drill and Routine 983 So in human action, against the spasm of energy, we offset the continuity of drill…spend the same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing it into a moment. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Power.
Drinking
Drinking 391 Hawthorne on the pleasures of drinking: “The temperance-men may preach till doom’s day; and still this cold and barren world will look warmer, kindlier, mellower through the medium of a toper’s glass….” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.
Drinking 39 A meeting between old friends should never be dry. Hawthorne, Fanshawe.
Drinking 49 One took his dram [of whiskey] because he felt sick; another to make him sleep well; and a third because he had nothing else to do. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches.
Drinking 78 It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people…can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Drinking 122 We were all irritable now with the fading ale…. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Drinking 187 Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater, and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendor. Dickens, Sketches by Boz.
Drinking 787 But the true purpose of their drinking—and one that will induce men to drink, or do something equivalent, as long as this weary world shall endure—was the renewed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful sense of things present and to come, with which, for about a quarter-of-an-hour, the dram permeated their systems. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Drinking 789 The flavor of this wine, added he, and its perfume, still more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Drinking 181 Hot punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen--an extremely pleasant thing under any circumstances--but in that snug old parlor, before the roaring fire, with the wind blowing outside till every timber in the old house creaked.... Dickens, Pickwick.
Drinking 528 As the cocked hat would have been spoilt if left there, Sam very considerately flattened it down on the head of the gentleman in blue, and putting the big stick in his hand, propped him up against his own street door, rang the bell, and walked quietly home. Dickens, Pickwick.
Drinking : 17 Like a gas lamp in the street, with the wind in the pipe, he had exhibited for a moment an unnatural brilliancy; then sunk so low as to be scarcely discernible. Dickens, Pickwick.
Drunkenness 183 [Drunk]: he was conscious that he was talking in a loud voice, very succinctly and convincingly. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.
Dreaming 831 I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circumstances of which utterly vanished at the moment when they converged to some tragical catastrophe, and thus grew too powerful for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Dreams 94 Catherine: I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me, ever after, and changed my ideas…. E. Brontë, Wuthering Heights.
Dreams 345 What an air of probability sometimes runs through a dream…and at others, what a heap of absurdities it is. Austen, Emma
Dreams 306 Seven hundred years ago—or it may have been fifteen hundred according to Malory’s notation—people took dreams as seriously as the psychiatrists do today. T. H. White, The Once and Future King.
Dreams 1394 Just as in a dream everything may be unreal, incoherent, and contradictory except the feeling behind the dream…. Tolstoi, War and Peace
Dreams 188 As in a dream a man chasing another/ cannot catch him, nor can he in flight/ escape from his pursuer…. Homer, Iliad.
Drill and Routine
Drill and Routine 983 The second substitute for temperament is drill, the power of use and routine. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Power.
Drill and Routine 983 So in human action, against the spasm of energy, we offset the continuity of drill…spend the same amount of force over much time, instead of condensing it into a moment. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Power.
Drinking
Drinking 391 Hawthorne on the pleasures of drinking: “The temperance-men may preach till doom’s day; and still this cold and barren world will look warmer, kindlier, mellower through the medium of a toper’s glass….” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.
Drinking 39 A meeting between old friends should never be dry. Hawthorne, Fanshawe.
Drinking 49 One took his dram [of whiskey] because he felt sick; another to make him sleep well; and a third because he had nothing else to do. Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches.
Drinking 78 It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people…can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don’t see or care. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Drinking 122 We were all irritable now with the fading ale…. Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
Drinking 187 Gin-drinking is a great vice in England, but wretchedness and dirt are a greater, and until you improve the homes of the poor, or persuade a half-famished wretch not to seek relief in the temporary oblivion of his misery, with the pittance which, divided among his family, would furnish a morsel of bread for each, gin-shops will increase in number and splendor. Dickens, Sketches by Boz.
Drinking 787 But the true purpose of their drinking—and one that will induce men to drink, or do something equivalent, as long as this weary world shall endure—was the renewed youth and vigor, the brisk, cheerful sense of things present and to come, with which, for about a quarter-of-an-hour, the dram permeated their systems. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Drinking 789 The flavor of this wine, added he, and its perfume, still more than its taste, makes me remember that I was once a young man. Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance.
Drinking 181 Hot punch is a pleasant thing, gentlemen--an extremely pleasant thing under any circumstances--but in that snug old parlor, before the roaring fire, with the wind blowing outside till every timber in the old house creaked.... Dickens, Pickwick.
Drinking 528 As the cocked hat would have been spoilt if left there, Sam very considerately flattened it down on the head of the gentleman in blue, and putting the big stick in his hand, propped him up against his own street door, rang the bell, and walked quietly home. Dickens, Pickwick.
Drinking : 17 Like a gas lamp in the street, with the wind in the pipe, he had exhibited for a moment an unnatural brilliancy; then sunk so low as to be scarcely discernible. Dickens, Pickwick.
Drunkenness 183 [Drunk]: he was conscious that he was talking in a loud voice, very succinctly and convincingly. Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise.
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