To "know your place" is a good idea in politics. That is not to say "stay in your place" or "hang on to your place," because ambit...ion or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place--a feel for one's own position in the control room--is useful in gauging what you should try to do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you ...one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Aesthetically at odds, these two genres of mass humor form a Janus face of American culture. Stand-up is a surviving bastion of in...dividual expression. The comedian confronts the audience with his or her personality and wins celebration--the highest form of acceptance--or is scorned and rebuffed as a pitiable outsider. The heckler, the mood of the audience, or the temperature of the room cannot always be handled through quality control. Even when presented electronically, the jokes of a stand-up monologue cannot be underlined by canned laughter without the manipulation thoroughly exposing itself.... The sitcom, by contrast, is the technology of the assembly-line brought to art. Even when live audiences are used, their reactions are "sweetened" with carefully calculated titters, chortles, and guffaws. Large sums of investment capital must be assembled to produce a sitcom; all factors must be controlled by recognized experts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the Iliad noble heroes move inexorably, by way of a combination of choice and of forces beyond their control, toward destructio...n and dissolution. We are left with mourning, honour, endurance, and pity. In the Odyssey a somewhat dubiously heroic hero wins his way through various fantastical hazards by means of trickery and ingenuity. The Odyssey is not exclusive; it has room for travel, for rustics and servants, for low life, and for dastardly villains. Its overall movement is away from war and from barbarity towards prosperity and peace, cen tred on the wife and a happy domestic scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To make life more bearable and pleasant for everybody, choose the issues that are significant enough to fight over, and ignore or ...use distraction for those you can let slide that day. Picking your battles will eliminate a number of conflicts, and yet will still leave you feeling in control.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To try to control a nine-month-old's clinginess by forcing him away is a mistake, because it counteracts a normal part of the chil...d's development. To think that the child is clinging to you because he is spoiled is nonsense. Clinginess is not a discipline issue, at least not in the sense of correcting a wrongdoing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: "W...here was I before I was born." In the beginning was ... what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »