The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From cradle to grave this problem of running order through chaos, direction through space, discipline through freedom, unity throu...gh multiplicity, has always been, and must always be, the task of education, as it is the moral of religion, philosophy, science, art, politics and economy; but a boy's will is his life, and he dies when it is broken, as the colt dies in harness, taking a new nature in becoming tame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject... of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This sel...f-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world's affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. "I don't go to question the good Lord in his wisdom," runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, "but I jest cain't see why He put valleys in between the hills."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pessimists say that the family is eroding. Optimists say the family is diversifying. Both points of view are right. Families are m...ore diverse and they are more in trouble--but not because of their diversity. The families of today--whatever their size or shape--are in crisis because our economy is failing, our national resources are shrinking, and our governmental policies to support them are inadequate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world 's a bubble, and the life of man Less then a span:... In his conception wretched, from the womb So to the tomb; Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years With cares and fears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Economy, prudence, and a simple life are the sure masters of need, and will often accomplish that which, their opposites, with a f...ortune at hand, will fail to do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around... the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert--a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Success and failure in our own national economy will hang upon the degree to which we are able to work with races and nations whos...e social order and whose behavior and attitudes are strange to us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »