There's an African story of birth where the women gather and send you across the river, and as you walk across this log across the... river you head out with these women. As you go across on the narrowest part you're alone. No one can be there with you, and as you emerge onto the other side of the river, all the women who have ever given birth are there to greet you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere, wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll... be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready. And when the people are eatin' the stuff they raised, livin'in the houses they build, I'll be there too.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Travel is like adultery: one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be diss...atisfied with where you live. There is in men, as Peter Quennell said, "a centrifugal tendency." In our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have often thought that the fittest locality for a human dwelling was on the edge of the land, that there the constant lesson a...nd impression of the sea might sink deep into the life and character of the landsman, and perhaps impart a marine tint to his imagination. It is a noble word, that mariner,--one who is conversant with the sea. There should be more of what it signifies in each of us. It is a worthy country to belong to,--we look to see him not disgrace it. Perhaps we should be equally mariners and terraners, and even our Green Mountains need some of that sea-green to be mixed with them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like most vigorous-minded men, seeing that there was no stopping-place between dogma and negation, he preferred to accept dogma. O...f all weaknesses he most disliked timed and half-hearted faith. He would rather have jumped at once to Strong's pure denial, than yield an inch to the argument that a mystery was to be paltered with because it could not be explained.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celeb...rated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever moreLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We shall renew the battle in the plain Tomorrow--red with blood will Xanthus be;... Hector and Ajax will be there again, Helen will come upon the wall to see.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The work is rather too light, bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long<...br />chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique of Walter Scott, or a history of Buonaparte, or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Predictions usually deal with events--who will win an election, whether or not a country will go to war, the specification of a ne...w invention; they center on decisions. Yet such predictions, while possible, cannot be formalized, i.e. made subject to rules. The prediction of events is inherently difficult. Events are the intersect of social vectors (interests, forces, pressures, and the like). While one can to some extent assess the strength of these vectors individually, one would need a "social physics" to predict the exact crosspoints where decisions and forces combine.... Forecasting is possible where there are regularities and recurrences of phenomena (these are rare), of where there are persisting trends whose direction, if not exact trajectory, can be plotted with statistical time-series or be formulated as historical tendencies. Necessarily, therefore, one deals with probabili ties and an array of possible projections. But the limitations of forecasting are also evident. The further one reaches ahead in time with a set of forecasts, the greater the margin for error, since the fan of the projections widens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »