Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing. It embodies, indeed, something better than... the metaphysics of the Stone Age, namely, as was said, the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From the moment of birth, when the stone-age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to these forces of... violence, called love, as its mother and father have been, and their parents and their parents before them. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities. This enterprise is on the whole successful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And when his hours are numbered, and the world Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,... Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, The frolic architecture of the snow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here [in London, history] ... seemed the very fabric of things, as if the city were a single growth of stone and brick, uncounted ...strata of message and meaning, age upon age, generated over the centuries to the dictates of some now all-but-unreadable DNA of commerce and empire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian. In his poetry, as in Hom...er's, only the simplest and most enduring features of humanity are seen, such essential parts of a man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple; we see the circles of stone, and the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of life acquire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through his mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is distinguished by the few elements in the lives of its heroes. They stand on the heath, between the stars and the earth, shrunk to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless plain for their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted entire from age to age. There are but few objects to distract their sight, and their life is as unencumbered as the course of the stars they gaze at.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the libert...y of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her--Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone--a long galaxy of great women.... Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full pe...riod, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled ...business. For the experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might have done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and manage of actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not to innovate, which draws unknown inconveniences; use extreme remedies at first; and, that which doubleth all errors, will not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since it is the Other within us who is old, it is natural that the revelation of our age should come to us from outside--from othe...rs. We do not accept it willingly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »