The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able... to obtain the truth adequately, while on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. Therefore, since the truth seems to be like the proverbial door, which no one can fail to hit, in this way it is easy, but the fact that we can have a whole truth, and not the particular part we aim at shows the difficulty of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sky calls To the deaf earth. The proverbial disarray... Of morning corrects itself as you stand up. You are wearing a text.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the so...ldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The reason for the slow progress of the world seems to lie in a single fact. Every man is born under the yoke, and grows up beneat...h the oppressions of his age. He can only get a vision of the unselfish forces in the world by appealing to them, and every appeal is a call to arms. If he fights he must fight, not one man, but a conspiracy. He is always at war with a civilization. On his side is proverbial philosophy, a galaxy of invisible saints and sages, and the half-developed consciousness and professions of everybody. Against him is the world, and every selfish passion in his own heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Vulgarism in language is the distinguishing characteristic of bad company, and a bad education. A man of fashion avoids nothing wi...th more care than that. Proverbial expressions, and trite sayings, are the flowers of the rhetoric of vulgar man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings--they are so trite, so threadbare..., that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As to the permanent interest of individuals in the aggregated interests of the community, and in the proverbial maxim, that honest...y is the best policy, present temptation is often found to be an overmatch for those considerations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The proverbial notion of historical distance consists in our having lost ninety-five of every hundred original facts, so the remai...ning ones can be arranged however one likes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »