Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate;Mdebt, which consumes so much tim...e, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules--that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the ...devilish in it--that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. It hardens as his arteries harden. It has Katzenjammer on the days succeeding his indiscretions. It is gaudy when he is young and gathers decorum as he grows old. On the day after he makes a mash on a new girl it glows and glitters. If he has fed well, it is mellow. If he has gastritis it is bitter. In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else. To attempt to teach it is as silly as to set up courses in making love. The man who makes love out of a book is not making love at all; he is simply imitating someone else making love. God help him if, in love or literary composition, his preceptor be a pedagogue!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil, The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates... Of snails, musician of pears, principium And lex. Sed quæritur: is this same wig Of things, this nincompated pedagogue, Preceptor to the sea?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the Prince of Piedmont [later Charles Emmanuel IV, King of Sardinia] was seven years old, his preceptor instructing him in my...thology told him all the vices were enclosed in Pandora's box. "What! all!" said the Prince. "Yes, all." "No," said the Prince; "curiosity must have been without."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »