There is no kind of false Wit which has been so recommended by the Practice of all Ages, as that which consists in a Jingle of Wor...ds, and is comprehended under the general Name of Punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a Weed, which the Soil has a natural Disposition to produce. The seeds of Punning are in the Minds of all Men, and tho' they may be subdued by Reason, Reflection, and good Sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest Genius, that is not broken and cultivated by the Rules of Art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the Mind to Poetry, Painting, Musick, or other more noble Arts, it often breaks out in Punns and Quibbles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we may remember what the Romans ... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men..., among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One learns quite easily to identify the rich person who is making a career out of dangling the carrot; of being fawned on by insti...tutions eager for his (or, more often, her) money. It is not very productive to "cultivate" them. I associated with many, and developed great compassion for rich people who suspect that they are in demand only because they are a potential source of income to some cause or institution. Whether it's true or not, their suspicions isolate them from all save a handful of old and trusted friends, turn them sour, make it difficult for them to accept new friends at face value, and leave them with little attraction other than their money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed & governed their passions or have no passions, but because they have cul...tivated their understandings. The treasures of Heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into Heaven let him be ever so holy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »