Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and..., in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nobody who has any kind of creative imagination can possibly be anything but disappointed with real life.... Of course, you could ...always argue that you live more intensely in your mental world-substitute than we who only wallow in the real thing.... But the trouble is that you can't be content to stick to your beautiful ersatz. You have to descend into evening clothes and Ciro's and chorus girls--and perhaps even politics ... with lamentable results. Because you're not at home with these lumpy bits of matter. They depress you, they bewilder you, they shock you and sicken you and make a fool of you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is easy to talk of sitting at home contented, when others are seeing or making shows. But not to have been where it is supposed..., and seldom supposed falsely, that all would go if they could; to be able to say nothing when everyone is talking; to have no opinion when everyone is judging; to hear exclamations of rapture without power to depress; to listen to falsehoods without right to contradict, is, after all, a state of temporary inferiority, in which the mind is rather hardened by stubbornness, than supported by fortitude. If the world be worth winning let us enjoy it, if it is to be despised let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A country survives its legislation. That truth should not comfort the conservative nor depress the radical. For it means that publ...ic policy can enlarge its scope and increase its audacity, can try big experiments without trembling too much over the result. This nation could enter upon the most radical experiments and could afford to fail in them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though a censure lies against those who are poor and proud, yet is Pride sooner to be forgiven in a poor person than in a rich one...; since in the latter it is insult and arrogance; in the former, it may be a defense against temptations to dishonesty; and, if manifested on proper occasions, may indicate a natural bravery of mind, which the frowns of fortune cannot depress.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can glut ourselves with how-to-raise children information . . . strive to become more mature and aware but none of this will sp...are us from the . . . inevitability that some of the time we are going to fail our children. Because there is a big gap between knowing and doing. Because mature, aware people are imperfect too. Or because some current event in our life may so absorb or depress us that when our children need us we cannot come through.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »