In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sinc...erity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great, the rich, the powerful, too often bestow their favours upon their inferiors in the manner they bestow their scraps upon... their dogs, so as neither to oblige man nor dogs. It is no wonder if favours, benefits, and even charities thus bestowed ungraciously, should be as coldly and faintly acknowledged.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"The unities, sir,' he said, "are a completeness--a kind of universal dovetailedness with regard to place and time--a sort of gene...ral oneness, if I may be allowed to use so strong an expression. I take those to be the dramatic unities, so far as I have been enabled to bestow attention upon them, and I have read much upon the subject, and thought much."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Essay writing is perhaps ... the easiest for the author and requires little more than what is called a fluency of words and a viva...city of expression to avoid dullness; but without ... a real foundation of matter ... an essay writer is very apt, like Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, to think that if he had the tediousness of a king, he would bestow it all upon his readers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give pleasure to our Lovers or bestow C...harity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself, like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to ...bestow herself upon a certain man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the vagabond began To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.... Then, as he placed another lock upon the shapely head, With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture--dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »