Some of the things ... sound like things our grandmothers would have told us: "Men will be boys. We let them play their little gam...es with each other. We know it isn't about the important things, but they think so. So we let them. We take care of them so that they can go on playing...." What grandma did not tell us is that men are capable of something altogether different.... But even though men are untapped wells of potential, they will not move forward if women continue to subsidize the status quo.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And upside down in air were towers Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours... And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wellsLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then we have difficulties between soldiers, very slight and easily disposed of; but troubles between soldiers and the carpenters w...hose tools disappear mysteriously, and farmers in the neighborhood who go to bed with roosts of barnyard fowl and wake up chickenless and fowlless, are more troublesome.... Our men are fully equal to the famous Massachusetts men in a mechanical way. They build quarters, ditches, roads, traps; dig wells, catch fish, kill squirrels, etc., etc., and it is really a new sensation, the affection and pride one feels respecting such a body of men in the aggregate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Darwin was, like Copernicus, a one-idea man. Each had his "nuclear inspiration" early in life, and spent the rest of his life work...ing it out--the ratio of inspiration to perspiration being heavily in favor of the second. Both lacked the many-sidedness, that universality of interest and amazing multitude of achievement in unrelated fields of research which characterised Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of lesser but equally versatile geniuses. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Darwin and Copernicus, after the decisive turning point when their course was set, led a life of duty, devotion to task, rigorous self-discipline, and spiritual desiccation. It looks as if the artesian wells of their inspiration had been replaced by a mechanical water supply kept under pressure by sheer power of will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The differences between the youthful H.G. Wells and the mature Henry James were so basic and numerous that it seems almost miracul...ous that they ever knew each other well enough to have started a feud. James was fastidious and was preoccupied in many of his works with matters of taste and high society. Wells could be slovenly, considered James's taste artificial, and found any young scientist far more interesting than a room full of dukes and duchesses. James was an artist who seemed to feel the chief value of life was to give him subjects for his novels. Wells wanted to have a hand in reshaping life and constructing a new world, and considered his books merely useful tools toward these ends. James would agonize for hours over a single sentence, refining and refining it until sometimes only his most devoted readers cared to thread their way through the innumerable clauses he found necessary for communication of his exact meaning. Wells scoffed at such painstaking craftsmanship, and preferred to state his ideas so that even the slowest reader could follow him without difficulty. James was an artist, however tortured his sentences finally became. Wells was a propagandist, however skillfully he stated his sometimes complex ideas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here we'll strip and cool our fire In cream below, in milk-baths higher;... And when all wells are drawn dry, I'll drink a tear out of thine eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With deep men, as with deep wells, it takes a long time for anything that falls into them to hit bottom. Onlookers, who almost nev...er wait long enough, readily suppose that such men are callous and unresponsive--or even boring.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »