Probability but no truth, facility but no freedom--it is owing to these two fruits that the tree of knowledge cannot be confused w...ith the tree of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the m...emory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province of... woman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther, I could, with much more facili...ty and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wit and wisdom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fa...shions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The core problem of human language ... I take to be this: having mastered a language, one is able to understand an indefinite numb...er of expressions that are new to one's experience, they bear no simple physical resemblance and are in no simple way analogous to the expressions that constitute one's linguistic experience; and one is able, with greater or less facility, to produce such expressions on an appropriate occasion, despite their novelty, and independently of detecting stimulus configurations, and to be understood by others who share this mysterious ability.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are,--1. Security to possessors;... 2. Facility to acquirers; and, 3. Hope to all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, i...t by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some minds have a greater facility of throwing off impressions, and are, as it were, more transparent or porous than others. Thus ...the French present a marked contrast to the English in this respect. A Frenchman addresses you at once with a sort of lively indifference; an Englishman is more on his guard, feels his way, and is either exceedingly silent, or lets you into his whole confidence, which he cannot so well impart to an entire stranger. Again, a Frenchman is naturally humane: an Englishman is, I should say, only friendly by habit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »