[T]he syndrome known as life is too diffuse to admit of palliation. For every symptom that is eased, another is made worse. The ho...rse leech's daughter is a closed system. Her quantum of wantum cannot vary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a kindly eye and a comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary,... uses malice to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homely-spun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at the table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its every stop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones ...of its slenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, who could make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was born into a country without literature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A concern with parenting...must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but ...participation in an interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of ...the smoker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alas for America as I must so often say, the ungirt, the diffuse, the profuse, procumbent, one wide ground juniper, out of which n...o cedar, no oak will rear up a mast to the clouds! It all runs to leaves, to suckers, to tendrils, to miscellany. The air is loaded with poppy, with imbecility, with dispersion, & sloth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The genius of reading and of gardening are antagonistic, like resinous and vitreous electricity. One is concentrative in sparks an...d shocks: the other is diffuse strength; so that each disqualifies its workman for the other's duties.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must learn to differentiate between fears and anxieties. Fears are states of apprehension which focus on isolated and recogniza...ble dangers so that they may be judiciously appraised and realistically countered. Anxieties are diffuse states of tension (caused by a loss of mutual regulation and a consequent upset in libidinal and aggressive controls) which magnify and even cause the illusion of an outer danger, without pointing to appropriate avenues of defense or mastery. These two forms of apprehension obviously often occur together, and we can insist on a strict separation only for the sake of the present argument. If, in an economic depression, a man is afraid that he may lose his money, his fear may be justified. But if the idea of having to live on an income only ten times, instead of twenty-five times as large as that of his average fellow-citizen causes him to lose his nerve and to commit suicide, then we must consult our clinical formulas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
General education is the best preventive of the evils now most dreaded. In the civilized countries of the world, the question is h...ow to distribute most generally and equally the property of the world. As a rule, where education is most general the distribution of property is most general.... As knowledge spreads, wealth spreads. To diffuse knowledge is to diffuse wealth. To give all an equal chance to acquire knowledge is the best and surest way to give all an equal chance to acquire property.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great charm of poetry consists in lively pictures of the sublime passions, magnanimity, courage, disdain of fortune; or those ...of the tender affections, love and friendship; which warm the heart, and diffuse over it similar sentiments and emotions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »