It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cau...se you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is t...o change the labels.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to live... in our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth, And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,... With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and, till action, lust... Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel not to trust; Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted, and no sooner had, Past reason hated as a swallowed bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe, Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows, yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Children ... after a certain age do not welcome parental advice. Occasionally, they may listen to another adult, which is why perh...aps people should switch children with their neighbors and friends for a while in the teen years!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sir Toby Belch. Pourquoi, my dear knight? Sir Andrew Aguecheek. What is "pourquoi?" Do, or not do? I would I had bestowed tha...t time in the tongues that I have in fencing, dancing, and bear-baiting. O had I but followed the arts!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like som...e plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal.... No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And yet--it is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. Beauty, without ex...pression, tires.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pagea...nt marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »