What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignati...on--of all the conflicts and the sacrifices that enno ble us most. A sick room may often furnish the worth of volumes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Attachment to a baby is a long-term process, not a single, magical moment. The opportunity for bonding at birth may be compared to... falling in love--staying in love takes longer and demands more work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am going to tell you something concerning myself, which ... will I believe a little surprise you--it is, that I scarce wish for ...anything so truly, really and greatly, as to be in love.... I cannot help thinking it is a great happiness to have a strong and particular attachment to some one person, independent of duty, interest, relationship or pleasure: but I carry not my wish so far as a mutual tendresse--God no, I should be contented to love sola--and let Duets be reserved for those who have a proper sense of their superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My own opinion is that [love] is felt most completely in marriage, or some comparable attachment of long duration. Love takes time.... What are called "love affairs" may afford a wide, and in retrospect, illuminating variety of emotions; not only fierce satisfactions and swooning delights, but the horrors of jealousy and the desperation of parting attend them; the hangover from one of these emotional riots may be long and dreadful. But rarely have the pleasures of love an opportunity to manifest themselves in such riots of passion. Love affairs are for emotional sprinters; the pleasures of love are for the emotional marathoners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attach...ment to life in the hour of difficulty. But the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present's afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen,... An attachment a la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Am I in love? ... If in love, where's the sweetheart? Is it the noble-hearted F___ or the giddy, young, black-eyed E___ who fills ...my thoughts? Do feeling and judgment go together? I feel the strong longing, but not the fixed attachment which belongs to the true love. The settled object is wanting. It is useless to attempt to cast myself free from the cords which a too warm imagination throws about me. The only cure is marriage. If that is not the specific I may as well despair of ever making even a respectable figure in life; ... I am almost wholly worthless.... With me too, believing as I do, or have, that it was a part of my patrimony to be gifted with more than the ordinary allotment of what is called "common sense." I must be in the chrysalis state, neither a boy nor a man; not in love and yet not whole of heart. Well I hope I shall be safely delivered soon, for if I am not, woe to the future!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English, besides being "good haters," are dogged and downright, and have no salvos for their self-love. Their vanity does not ...heal the wounds made in their pride. The French, on the contrary, are soon reconciled to fate, and so enamoured of their own idea, that nothing can put them out of conceit with it. Whatever their attachment to their country, to liberty or glory, they are not so affected by the loss of these as to make any desperate effort or sacrifice to recover them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »