Without seeing any reason to believe that women are, on the average, so strong physically, intellectually, or morally, as men, I c...annot shut my eyes to the fact that many women are much better endowed in all these respects than many men, and I am at a loss to understand on what grounds of justice or public policy a career which is open to the weakest and most foolish of the male sex should be forcibly closed to women of vigor and capacity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be but few people who, when at a loss for topics of conversation, will not reveal the more secret affairs of their frie...nds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always observed, when there is as much sour as sweet in a compliment, that an Englishman is eternally at a loss within hims...elf, whether to take it, or let it alone: a Frenchman never is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Freudian psychoanalytical theory is a mythology that answers pretty well to Levi-Strauss's descriptions. It brings some kind of or...der into incoherence; it, too, hangs together, makes sense, leaves no loose ends, and is never (but never) at a loss for explanation. In a state of bewilderment it may therefore bring comfort and relief.... give its subject a new and deeper understanding of his own condition and of the nature of his relationship to his fellow men. A mythical structure will be built up around him which makes sense and is believable-in, regardless of whether or not it is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a sp...eech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is ...a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But mark, madam, we live amongst riddles and mysteries--the most obvious things, which come in our way, have dark sides, which the... quickest sight cannot penetrate into; and even the clearest and most exalted understandings amongst us find ourselves puzzled and at a loss in almost every cranny of nature's works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lord Angelo is precise, Stands at a guard with envy, scarce confesses... That his blood flows, or that his appetite Is more to bread than stone. Hence shall we see If power change purpose, what our seemers be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »