A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the d...ebts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democr...atic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What one really wants is youth, and what one really loses is years. Life becomes at last a mere piece of acting. One goes on by ha...bit, playing more or less clumsily that one is still alive. It is ludicrous and at times humiliating, but there is a certain style in it which youth has not. We become all, more or less, gentlemen; we are ancien régime; we learn to smile while gout racks us.... We get out of bed in the morning all broken up, without nerves, color or temper, and by noon we are joking with young women about the play. One lives in constant company with diseased hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs; one shakes hands with certain death at closer embrace every day; one sees paralysis in every feature and feels it in every muscle; all one's functions relax their action day by day; and, what is worse, one's grasp on the interests of life relaxes with the physical relaxation; and, through it all, we improve; our manners acquire refinement; our sympathies grow wider; our youthful self-consciousness disappears; very ordinary men and women are found to have charm; our appreciations have weight; we should almost get to respect ourselves if we knew of anything human to respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a commu...nity of thought, a rivalry of aim.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject... of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveal...s that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am willing, for a money consideration, to test this physical strength, this nervous force, and muscular power with which I've be...en gifted, to show that they will bear a certain strain. If I break down, if my brain gives way under want of sleep, my heart ceases to respond to the calls made on my circulatory system, or the surcharged veins of my extremities burst--if, in short, I fall helpless, or it may be, dead on the track, then I lose my money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »