When our kids are young, many of us rush out to buy a cute little baby book to record the meaningful events of our young child's l...ife...But I've often thought there should be a second book, one with room to record the moral milestones of our child's lives. There might be space to record dates she first shared or showed compassion or befriended a new student or thought of sending Grandma a get-well card or told the truth despite its cost.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It may cost me twenty thousand francs; but for twenty thousand francs, I will have the right to rail against the iniquity of human...ity, and to devote to it my eternal hatred.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to compl...ete it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact... that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manlin...ess, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the the movements of the world gave a chance for it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing so...ciety for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity--advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers h...imself to be part of an old and honorable tradition--of intellectual activity, of letters--and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpa...ble, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »