It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which ...is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With proper attribution, to quote another's thoughts and words is appropriate; plagiarism, however, is cheating, and it may break ...copyright law as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...Often the accurate answer to a usage question begins, "It depends." And what it depends on most often is where you are, who you... are, who your listeners or readers are, and what your purpose in speaking or writing is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
although they are sometimes less dull in conversation than in Clichés seldom have any juice left in them and hence add little fre...sh flavor to your prose) writing. Pretty as a picture no longer conjures up a very clear image.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If American has points of inferiority to English, they are merely matters of degree; if the Americans are, as Oliver Wendell Holme...s said in 1858, "the Romans of the modern world--the great assimilating people," the English are only to an exceedingly limited degree its Greeks. They are tarred too much with the same brush of pragmatism, democracy, industrialism, and materialism for deep cleavage. Even America is not wholly democratic culturally; there are remarkable enclaves of aristocratic culture in the cosmopolitan and tradition-bound society of the Eastern seaboard, whose members look east toward Europe far more than they look west towards the heartland of Americanism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American novel tends to rest in contradictions and among extreme ranges of experience. When it attempts to resolve contradicti...ons, it does so in oblique, morally equivocal ways. As a general rule, it does so either in melodramatic actions or in pastoral idylls, although intermixed with both one may find the stirring instabilities of "American humor." These qualities constitute the uniqueness of that branch of the novelistic tradi tion which has flourished in this country. They help to account for the strong element of "romance" in the American "novel." By contrast, the English novel has followed a middle way. It is notable for its great practical sanity, its powerful, engrossing composition of wide ranges of experience into a moral centrality and equability of judgment. Oddity, distortion of personality, dislocations of normal life, recklessness of behavior--these the English novel has included. Yet the profound poetry of disorder we find in the American novel is missing, with rare exceptions, from the English.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
American gentlemen are a cross between English and French men, and yet really altogether like neither. They are more refined and m...odest than Frenchmen, and less manly, shy, and rough, than Englishmen. Their brains are finer and flimsier, their bodies less robust and vigorous than ours. We are the finer animals, and they the subtler spirits. Their intellectual tendency is to excitement and insanity, and ours to stagnation and stupidity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of the intrinsic differences that separate Americans from English the chief have their roots in the obvious disparity between the ...environment and traditions of the American people since the seventeenth century and those of the English. The latter have lived under a relatively stable social order, and it has impressed upon their souls their characteristic respect for what is customary and of good report. Until the First World War brought chaos to most of their institutions, their whole lives were regulated, perhaps more than those of any other people save the Spaniards, by regard for precedent. The Americans, though partly of the same blood, have felt no such restraint, and acquired no such habit of conformity. On the contrary, they have plunged to the other extreme, for the conditions of life in their country have put a high value upon the precisely opposite qualities of curiosity and daring, and so they have acquired that character of restlessness, that impatience of forms, that disdain of the dead hand, which now broadly marks them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The steadiness of English society, a necessary consequence of aristocratic institutions and habits, makes the English generally re...served and not easily excitable. The same cause gives stability to their views and inclinations. They are slow to promise, but you can depend upon them, they generally keep their word. It is difficult to get an English friend, but he remains a friend for life. The American character is more amiable, though often less reliable. The Americans are cordial, frank, anxious to oblige, and ready to make friends. In the fulness of their heart, they generally promise more than they can keep. Easily excited, they are not seldom deceived by their impressions, which, therefore, are often only transient.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »