Oh, yes, I'd do it all again; the spirit is willing yet; I feel the same desire to do the work but the flesh is weak. It's too bad... that our bodies wear out while our interests are just as strong as ever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Think of all the really successful men and women you know. Do you know a single one who didn't learn very young the trick of calli...ng attention to himself in the right quarters?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show,... Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow-- They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a nominally egalitarian society the ideal situation (socially speaking) is one in which the members of the "wrong" groups have ...the freedom to engage in literature (or equally significant activities) and yet do not do so, thus proving that they can't. But, alas, give them the least real freedom and they will do it. The trick thus becomes to make the freedom as nominal a freedom as possible and then--since some of the so-and-so's will do it anyway--develop various strategies for ignoring, condemning, or belittling the artistic works that result. If properly done, these strategies result in a social situation in which the "wrong" people are (supposedly) free to commit literature, art, or whatever, but very few do, and those who do (it seems) do it badly, so we can all go home to lunch.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,... I arise, I face the sunrise, And do the things my fathers learned to do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anestheti...c: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He m...ust do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »