Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask, "What's i...n it for me?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You call to a dog and a dog will break its neck to get to you. Dogs just want to please. Call to a cat and its attitude is, "What'...s in it for me?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his "Modern Pa...inters." I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the volumes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc.,--all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them. It is remarkable that these things should be said with reference to painting chiefly, rather than literature. The "Seven Lamps of Architecture," too, is made of good stuff; but, as I remember, there is too much about art in it for me and the Hottentots. We want to know about matters and things in general. Our house is as yet a hut.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the book comes out it may hurt you--but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first. I can only tell you about yourself... as much as I can face about myself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... often in the heat of noonday, leaning on a hoe, looking across valleys at the mountains, so blue, so close, my only conscious ...thought was, "How can I ever get away from here? How can I get to where they have books, where I can be educated?" I worked hard, always waiting for something to happen to change things. There came a time when I knew I must make them happen; that no one would do anything about it for me. And I did.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
According to legend, Dr. Sappington purchased his coffin several years before his death and kept it under his bed, with apples and... nuts in it for his visiting grandchildren.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rick: You played it for her, you can play it for me. Sam: Well, I don't think I can remember it.... Rick: If she can stand it, I can. Play it!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thus could not live, and I admitted it, unless on the entire earth, all creatures, or at least the greatest number, were turned ...toward me, eternally vacant, deprived of an independent life, ready at any moment to respond to my call, given to sterility until the day I deigned to grace them with my light. In short, for me to live happily, it was necessary for those chosen by me not to live at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The further limits of our being plunge, it seems to me, into an altogether other dimension of existence from the sensible and mere...ly "understandable" world. Name it the mystical region, or the supernatural region, whichever you choose. So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region (and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in a way for which we cannot articulately account), we belong to it in a more intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible world, for we belong in the most intimate sense wherever our ideals belong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »