Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to gove...rn this nation. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war," except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In New York--whose subway trains in particular have been "tattooed" with a brio and an energy to put our own rude practitioners to... shame--not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.... Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the "haves."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My idea is that the world outside--the so-called modern world--can only pervert and degrade the conceptions of the primitive insti...nct of art and feeling, and that our only chance is to accept the limited number of survivors--the one- in-a-thousand of born artists and poets--and to intensify the energy of feeling within that radiant centre.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject... of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since I am upon this Subject, I must observe that our English Poets have succeeded much better in the Stile, than in the Sentiment...s of their Tragedies. Their Language is very often noble and sonorous, but the sense either very trifling or very common. On the contrary, in the ancient Tragedies, and indeed in those of Corneille and Racine, tho' the Expressions are very great, it is the Thought that bears them up and swells them. For my own part, I prefer a noble Sentiment that is depressed with homely Language, infinitely before a vulgar one that is blown up with all the Sound and Energy of Expression. Whether this Defect in our Tragedies may arise from Want of Genius, Knowledge, or Experience in the Writers, or from their Compliance with the vicious Taste of their Readers, who are better Judges of the Language than of the Sentiments, and consequently relish the one more than the other, I cannot determine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I... don't intend to try any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptions... empirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The good husbands understand and offer to help. "All you have to do is ask" they say. But even helpful husbands have to be thanked..., their contributions acknowledged, credit given. All those pleases and thank yous. Being grateful takes time and energy. It's often easier to do it yourself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »