Bourbon's the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years befo...re you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most people can swim a narrow river. Water is an alien element, but with labor we can force ourselves through it. A good swimmer c...an cross a wide river, a lake, even the English Channel; no one, as far as we know, has ever swum the Atlantic Ocean, or is likely to do so. Even a champion swimmer, if he had business which required to spend alternate weeks in Paris and London, would not make the trip regularly by swimming the English Channel. Although we can force ourselves through water by skill and main strength, for all practical purposes our ability to traverse water is only as good as our ships or our airplanes. And so with the activities of our brains. Thinking is probably as foreign to human nature as is water; it is an unnatural element into which we throw ourselves with hesitation, and in which we flounder once we are there. We have learned, during the millenniums, to do rather well with thinking, but only if we buoy ourselves up with words. Some thinking of a simple sort we can do without words, but difficult and sustained thinking, presumably, is completely impossible without their aid, as traversing the Atlantic Ocean is presumably impossible without instruments or supramarine transportation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the Second World War approximately the same European allies fought approximately the same adversaries as in the first. Though t...he tide of the battle swung more violently to and fro, the battle ended in much the same way--with the defeat of Germany. The link between the two wars went deeper. Germany fought specifically in the second war to reverse the verdict of the first and to destroy the settlement which followed it. Her opponents fought, though less consciously, to defend that settlement; and this they achieved--to their own surprise. There was much utopian projecting while the second war was on; but at the end virtually every frontier of Europe and the Near East was restored unchanged, with the exception--admittedly a large exception--of Poland and the Baltic. Leaving out this area of north-eastern Europe, the only serious change on the map between the English Channel and the Indian Ocean was the transference of Istria from Italy to Yugoslavia. The first war destroyed old Empires and brought new states into existence. The second war created no new states and destroyed only Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To me, the sea is like a person--like a child that I've known a long time. It sounds crazy, I know, but when I swim in the sea I t...alk to it. I never feel alone when I'm out there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are inf...luenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks after them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gi...ves forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin--a la...nguage with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established, grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »