Johnny Rocco: Yeah, yeah, that's me. Sure, I was all of those things. And more! When Rocco talked everybody shut up and listened! ...What Rocco said went! Nobody was as big as Rocco! It'll be like that again only more so. I'll be back up there one of these days, and then you're really gonna see something! James Temple (with contempt): If the time ever comes when your kind can walk a city street in daylight with nothing to fear from the people.... Frank McCloud: The time has come, Mr. Temple. It's here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why don't you take a good look at yourself! What do you see?! A doctor, a scientist, a businessman? You see a scar-faced ex- con, ...a two-bit safecracker, a petty thief who don't know when he made the big time. Where do you come off to blast her! No matter what she's been, what she's done. She's a giant! And you wanna know why? Well, I'll tell ya. Because she sees something in you worth saving. If only one tenth of one percent of all the good in her could rub off on you, you'd be a giant too! But you're a midget! In your head, in your heart, in your whole makeup! You're a midget!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hoisted up The old man my father upon my back,... In the smoke made by sea for a new world Saving little a mind imperishable If time is, a love of past things tenuous As the hesitation of receding love. (To the reduction of uncitied littorals We brought chiefly the vigor of prophecy, Our hunger breeding calculation And fixed triumphs.)LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely up the gentle stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming banks, where... we had first pitched our tent, and drew nearer to the fields where our lives had passed, we seemed to detect the hues of our native sky in the southwest horizon. The sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason unknown to men, and to be marked with brighter colors than ordinary in the scroll of time. Though the shadows of the hills were beginning to steal over the stream, the whole river valley undulated with mild light, purer and more memorable than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary vales uninhabited by man. Two herons (Ardea herodias), with their long and slender limbs relieved against the sky, were seen traveling high over our heads,--their lofty and silent flight, as they were wending their way at evening, surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth's surface, but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol for the ages to study.... The last vestiges of daylight at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few stars being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous sound of our oars, a sort of rudimental music, suitable for the ear of Night and the acoustics of her dimly lighted halls; "Pulsae referunt ad sidera valles," and the valleys echoed the sound of the stars.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not a ...distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When off this stream he said to me, who sat in the bows, "Me teach you paddle." So, turning toward the shore, he got out, came for...ward, and placed my hands as he wished. He placed one of them quite outside the boat, and the other parallel with the first, grasping the paddle near the end, not over the flat extremity, and told me to slide it back and forth on the side of the canoe. This, I found, was a great improvement which I had not thought of, saving me the labor of lifting the paddle each time, and I wondered that he had not suggested it before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you ...can fool all of the people all of the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair--a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its pa...rts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »