There is no wisdom that can take the place of humanity, and we find that in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breadth, and we ...think that we could have been that man's acquaintance. He was worthy to be a citizen of England, while Petrarch and Boccaccio lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane in Switzerland and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wickliffe and Gower and Edward the Third and John of Gaunt and the Black Prince were his own countrymen as well as contemporaries; all stout and stirring names. The fame of Roger Bacon came down from the preceding century, and the name of Dante still possessed the influence of a living presence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is sometimes said that Christianity has always had its own form of psychoanalysis in the practice of confession.... It is true ...that a skilled confessor will compel the penitent to examine his mind more carefully and honestly than he has been doing, but he still works only on the conscious level. The psychoanalyst, on the other hand, tries to pierce through the conscious level to penetrate and expose the unconscious, and he works chiefly there. He does not call on the patient's willpower, but endeavors to get him to relax, making much more use of the patient's imagination. Further, he is not concerned with passing moral judgments on his patient's behavior or, at any rate directly, with strengthening him morally.... He tries to clear away the rubbish that is choking the spring of life and is not concerned with what happens to the stream when he has restored the flow. The confessor on the other hand is pre-occupied with directing the flow into the right channels.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Edith: This complete loveliness will fade. And we shall forget what it was like. Edward: Edith, don't.... Edith: Oh, it's bound to. Just a few years and the gilt wears off the gingerbread. Edward: Darling, answer me one thing truthfully. Have you ever seen gingerbread with gilt on it? Edith: [laughing] Fool! Edward: Then the whole argument is disposed of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"And what will you leave to your own mother dear, Edward, Edward?... And what will ye leave to your own mother dear, My dear son, now tell me, O?" "The curse of hell from me shall ye bear, Mother, mother;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dutton Peabody: No, no, no, you don't. No. I'm a newspaperman not a politician. Politicians are my meat. I build 'em up. I tear 'e...m down. But I, I wouldn't be one. I couldn't. It'd, it'd destroy me. Gimme a drink. Tom Donophon: The bar is closed. Peabody: Good people of Shinbone, I, I, I'm your conscience. I'm the still small voice that thunders in the night. I'm your watchdog that howls against the wolves. I'm, I'm your father confessor. I, I, I'm, what else am I? Tom: The town drunk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nearest analogy to Dreiser's "personal realism" is to be found in the painter Edward Hopper, who shares Dreiser's passion for ...transcendent writers, for images of trains and roads. Despite his similar choice of "ordinary" subjects, Hopper has written that his aim "has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impressions of nature." ... One feels in the awkwardness, the dreaming stillness of Hopper's figures, the same struggle to express the ultimate confrontation of men and things that one does in Dreiser's reverent descriptions of saloons, street-cars, trains, hotels, offices.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a cop who is both prowler and father: ... He has access to machinery that could get you put away;... and if, in the sickening light of the precinct, and if, in the sickening light of the precinct, your details sound like a portrait of your confessor, will you swallow, will you deny them, will you lie your way home? Hunger makes a human being lapse into a state of lethargy, especially city hunger. Is there any place else in the world where a human being is supposed to go hungry amidst plenty without an outcry, without protest, where only the boldest steal or kill for bread, and the timid crawl the streets, hunger like the beak of a terrible bird at night?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision.... It was really the trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to s...et this man free, every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted. The commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-car...ds when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »