[The] elderly and timid single gentleman in Paris ... never drove down the Champs Elysees without expecting an accident, and commo...nly witnessing one; or found himself in the neighborhood of an official without calculating the chances of a bomb. So long as the rates of progress held good, these bombs would double in force and number every ten years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Known commonly as the jackass, this long-eared little creature is respected throughout the southwest--roundly cursed yet respected...--and here he is usually referred to by his Spanish name, burro. Because of his extraordinary bray, he is sometimes ironically called the "Arizona Nightingale."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the categories they commonly used when... talking about girls; she wasn't a cock-teaser, a cold fish, an easy lay or a snarky bitch; she was an honorary person. She had grown to share their contempt for most women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For such orators to write is commonly as hard and fatal to their fame as to speak is easy and graceful to them. For to that easily... fluent eloquence, the strength of judgment is seldom joined which must continue the style graceful to posterity. For their prompt and almost turbulent mind, when in that leisure which is given to writers it resolveth itself, is overladen with the multitude of fancies that meet, and confusedly oppressed with its own wealth, can neither write all which it doth invent nor judiciously elect the best.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anestheti...c: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, th...e landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Friendship, "the wine of life," should, like a well-stocked cellar, be continually renewed; and it is consolatory to think, that a...lthough we can seldom add what will equal the generous first growths of our youth, yet friendship becomes insensibly old in much less time than is commonly imagined, and not many years are required to make it mellow and pleasant. Warmth will, no doubt, make a considerable difference. Men of affectionate temper and bright fancy will coalesce a great deal sooner than those who are cold and dull.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery--even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness--i...s to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »