Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking for... perfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I suggested to them also the great desirability of a general knowledge on the Island of the English language. They are under an En...glish speaking government and are a part of the territory of an English speaking nation.... While I appreciated the desirability of maintaining their grasp on the Spanish language, the beauty of that language and the richness of its literature, that as a practical matter for them it was quite necessary to have a good comprehension of English.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English...-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has been observed by another that the French Canadians do not extend nor perpetuate their influence. The British, Irish, and ot...her immigrants, who have settled the townships, are found to have imitated the American settlers and not the French. They reminded me in this of the Indians, whom they were slow to displace, and to whose habits of life they themselves more readily conformed than the Indians to theirs.... Thus, while the descendants of the Pilgrims are teaching the English to make pegged boots, the descendants of the French in Canada are wearing the Indian moccasin still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dubliners, strictly speaking, are my fellow-countrymen, but I don't care to speak of our "dear, dirty Dublin" as they do. Dubliner...s are the most hopeless, useless and inconsistent race of charlatans I have ever come across, on the island or the continent. This is why the English Parliament is full of the greatest windbags in the world. The Dubliner passes his time gabbing and making the rounds in bars or taverns or cathouses, without every getting 'fed up' with the double doses of whiskey and Home Rule, and at night, when he can hold no more and is swollen up with poison like a toad, he staggers from the side- door and, guided by an instinctive desire for stability along the straight line of the houses, he goes slithering his backside against all walls and corners. He goes "arsing along" as we say in English. There's the Dubliner for you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But there is nothing which delights and terrifies our English Theatre so much as a Ghost, especially when he appears in a bloody S...hirt. A Spectre has very often saved a Play, though he has done nothing but stalked across the Stage, or rose through a Cleft of it, and sunk again without speaking one Word.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 »
When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the rea...l and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of political... discourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were the ... requirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.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 »