The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated lo...neliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alas for the affairs of men! When they are fortunate you might compare them to a shadow; and if they are unfortunate, a wet sponge... with one dash wipes the picture away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in th...e memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman's adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In proper English households . . . one writer remembered in the 1630s as a time when, "The child perfectly loathed the sight of hi...s parents, as the slave his Torturer. Gentlemen of 30 or 40 years old, fitt for any employment in the commonwealth, were to stand like great mutes and fools bare headed before their parents; and the Daughters (grown women) were to stand at the Cupboards side during the whole time of the proud mothers visit, unless (as the fashion was) 'twas desired that leave (forsooth) should be given to them to kneele upon cushions brought them by the servingman, after they had done sufficient Penance standing."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are, one by... one, broken, but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada, it wears out the rock. In like manner, whatever the struggle of individuals, the great cause will gather strength.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is a man too strong and fierce for society, and by temper and position a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate... in him;Mnature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters, who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and the feldspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in, and keeps her balance true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[I]t forged ahead to become a full-fledged metropolis, with 143 faro games, 30 saloons, 4 banks, 27 produce stores, 3 express offi...ces--and an arena for bull-and-bear fights, which, described by Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune, is said to have given Wall Street its best-known phrases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections....... Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »