The supreme, the merciless, the destroyer of opposition, the exalted King, the shepherd, the protector of the quarters of the worl...d, the King the word of whose mouth destroys mountains and seas, who by his lordly attack has forced mighty and merciless Kings from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same to acknowledge one supremacy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood--the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done "f...or the sake of the children" justified, even ennobled the mother's role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned--the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emperor Joseph II: Your work is ingenious. It's quality work, and there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and ...it will be perfect. Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, majesty?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everyone has taste, yet it is more of a taboo subject than sex or money. The reason for this is simple: claims about your attitude...s to or achievements in the carnal and financial arenas can be disputed only by your lover and your financial advisers, whereas by making statements about your taste you expose body and soul to terrible scrutiny. Taste is a merciless betrayer of social and cultural attitudes. Thus, while anybody will tell you as much (and perhaps more than) you want to know about their triumphs in bed and at the bank, it is taste that gets people's nerves tingling.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blake and Goethe were individualists par excellence, uncompromisingly protective of their single vision. In both Faust Part II and... The Four Zoas, emphasis on the universality of the poet's message contrasts with the resistant texture of a compressed style and the striking complexity of the mythological machinery. Blake likes to emphasize that he is not writing for the simple-minded; Goethe takes a teasing pleasure in keeping philologists busy. Faust and The Four Zoas are dramatic epics of Humanity, but embodied in a mythic language whose uniqueness and quirkiness are jealously guarded. Blake never published The Four Zoas, though it culminates his early prophecies and provides the indispensable key to the later ones. And Goethe refused to allow Faust Part II to be printed in its entirety until after his death. Both poets postponed the public's discovery of their central works; secrecy was enforced as long as it could be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The King [Charles II] after the Restoration accused the poet, Edmund Waller, of having made finer verses in praise of Oliver Cromw...ell than of himself; to which he agreed, saying, that Fiction was the soul of Poetry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Droll thing life is--that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some kn...owledge of yourself--that comes too late--a crop of unextinguishable regrets.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a father I had some trouble finding the words to separate the person from the deed. Usually, when one of my sons broke the rule...s or a window, I was too angry to speak calmly and objectively. My own solution was to express my feelings, but in an exaggerated, humorous way: "You do that again and you will be grounded so long they will call you Rip Van Winkle II," or "If I hear that word again, I'm going to braid your tongue."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about... daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »