Everybody comes along at the right time.... Leonardo was lucky because he came along at the right time. Oscar Wilde was lucky beca...use he came at the right time--if he hadn't gone to court and been martyred he wouldn't be such a cult hero now. Or Jesus Christ--if he came back now he would really be up the shit because there's no capital punishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down--very important traits in times l...ike these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy's bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and ...lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a televion set.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most childhood problems don't result from "bad" parenting, but are the inevitable result of the growing that parents and children ...do together. The point isn't to head off these problems or find ways around them, but rather to work through them together and in doing so to develop a relationship of mutual trust to rely on when the next problem comes along.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shame, shame, shame. How many times have I told you not to be frightened? Have I not told you God looks after all his children?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For myself and my loved ones, I want the heat, which comes at the speed of light. I don't want to have to hang about for the blast..., which idles along at the speed of sound.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Emerson was the greater artist. His essays contain some of the most beautiful language in our literature. How Henry James could ha...ve thought he had never developed a "style" is to me one of the mysteries of criticism. Thoreau in Walden comes close to the master, but he falls behind in the homeliness of his details and in the occasional smugness of his social satire. It almost seems as if he were reacting against the chiseled beauty of Emerson's prose. The latter's sentences were so fine that he needed nothing else. They became, like marble statues, part of the garden that was Concord. Their composer, serene, calm, detached, bland in speech and manner, the soft-spoken philosopher revered by all, did not often trouble himself on his strolls in the woods and along the river to pluck the flowers or feed squirrels or even identify the different species of flora and fauna. As Thoreau observed, he wouldn't have been willing to trundle a wheelbarrow through the streets of Concord because it would have seemed out of character. Emerson communed with nature on a spiritual level, using his eyes to take in the landscape and his lungs the fresh air. He had no needs to brace himself with cold or rain or spend the night under the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »