For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us..., like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not tempted to explore it,--to penetrate to the shores of its Lake T...chad, and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the black Nile that concerns us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
With steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old "central ideas" of the Republic. We can do it. The human heart... is with us--God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare, that "all States as States, are equal," nor yet that "all citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that "all men are created equal."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous; from time to time it... throws of some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state.... Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great practical difference between the word, written or spoken, and the visual image is that we cannot read the former unless ...we have been initiated into the mystery of language, whereas visual images can be made intelligible to all men who have eyes.... The spiritual difference between the written word and the visual image is equally great. Precise though a word is, evocative though it be, the actual machinery of visual perception is not engaged. All that takes place, takes place now within the mind; the retina and the neurons sleep; we are in a world which has been created by old, long-stored stimuli; the accidents of energy exterior to ourselves have been totally excluded from it. Even the spoken word is further from this spiritual purity than the word upon the page, for sounds have at least a sensual immediacy of a sort, but the written word is only the ghost of a sound. We have entered now into a realm not of images but of substitutes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematic...s of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shams, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Being the dependents of the general government, and looking to its treasury as the source of all their emoluments, the state offic...ers, under whatever names they might pass and by whatever forms their duties might be prescribed, would in effect be the mere stipendiaries and instruments of the central power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the ...treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. I...t was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »