If the conversation turned to the Princes of the House of France, "people with whom neither you nor I will be acquainted, and we d...o not want to, do we?", my grandmother would say to Swann, who perhaps had a letter from Twickenham in his pocket; she made him move to the piano and turn the pages on evenings when my grandmother's sisters sang; she had with this being, elsewhere so sought after, the naive roughness of a child who plays with a collector's item without any more care than with a less expensive one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best way to teach a child restraint and generosity is to be a model of those qualities yourself. If your child sees that you w...ant a particular item but refrain from buying it, either because it isn't practical or because you can't afford it, he will begin to understand restraint. Likewise, if you donate books or clothing to charity, take him with you to distribute the items to teach him about generosity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging.... He must not be afraid to return again and... again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the matter itself is only a deposit, a stratum, which yields only to the most meticulous examination what constitutes the real treasure hidden within the earth: the images, severed from all earlier associations, that stand--like precious fragments or torsos in a collector's gallery--in the prosaic rooms of our later understanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Advertising could not be understood as simply another form of salesmanship. It aimed at something new--the creation of consumption... communities.... The primary argument of the salesman was personal and private: this hat is perfect for you (singular). His focus was on the individual; he succeeded when he cajoled, flattered, managed, and overwhelmed a particular buyer's ego. The primary argument of the advertisement was public and general: This hat is perfect for you (plural). While the salesman persuaded the customer that the item was peculiarly suited to his unique needs, the advertisement persuaded groups of buyers that the item was well suited to the needs of all persons in the group. The advertisement succeeded when it discovered, defined, and persuaded a new community of consumers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given ...trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All of women's aspirations--whether for education, work, or any form of self-determination--ultimately rest on their ability to de...cide whether and when to bear children. For this reason, reproductive freedom has always been the most popular item in each of the successive feminist agendas--and the most heavily assaulted target of each backlash.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not likely,... let me live as I will, that I shall ever be a rich woman, if I am to live in America; the cost of one's exist...ence here is something fabulous, and the amount of discomfort one obtains for money, that purchases a liberal allowance of luxury as well as comfort in Europe, is by no means a small item of annoyance in one's daily life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He knew that he was precisely what he himself would have chosen to be had God consulted him on the subject of his birth; he fully ...appreciated and approved what had been bestowed, and realized that he couldn't have done the job better himself, in fact he would not have changed a single item.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away i...n the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »