We have the pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of greatness. Ours are more natural and all the more solid and s...ure for being humbler. Since we will not do so out of conscience, at least out of ambition let us reject ambition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One sticks to an opinion because he prides himself on having come to it on his own, and another because he has taken great pains t...o learn it and is proud to have grasped it: and so both do so out of vanity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both classically- and romantically-minded spirits--inasmuch as these two species always exist--occupy themselves with a vision of ...the future: but the former do so out of a strength of their age, the latter out of its weakness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can grouse about the food, and the C.O. and anything I blame please. And that's more than you with your Gestapo and your storm t...roopers and your Aryan bourgeois. Ahhh, nuts. What's the good of talking to you. You can't even begin to understand democracy. We own the right to be fed up with anything we damn please and say so out loud when we feel like it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is not so much a nightmare as a non-dream. The American non-dream is precisely a move to wipe the dream out of existence. ...The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous to a control system set up by the non-dreamers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So, we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night,... Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe And love itself have rest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nature will not let us fret and fume. She does not like our benevolence or our learning much better than she likes our frauds and ...wars. When we come out of the caucus, or the bank, or the abolition-convention, or the temperance-meeting, or the transcendental club, into the fields and woods, she says to us, "so hot? my little Sir."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... married women work and neglect their children because the duties of the homemaker become so depreciated that women feel compel...led to take a job in order to hold the respect of the community. It is one thing if women work, as many of them must, to help support the family. It is quite another thing--it is destructive of woman's freedom--if society forces her out of the home and into the labor market in order that she may respect herself and gain the respect of others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...no matter what happened, no one could take our heritage away from us. This heritage meant that we had strong bodies, pride, and... will power. We could never get so poor that we couldn't work our way out. Through droughts, floods, and tornadoes we could stick and work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »