There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows o...ne big thing." Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance--and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.... Their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classifica tion, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... today we round out the first century of a professed republic,--with woman figuratively representing freedom--and yet all free,... save woman.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a Jamaican is born of a black woman and some English or Scotsman, the black mother is literally and figuratively kept out of ...sight as far as possible, but no one is allowed to forget that white father, however questionable the circumstances of birth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All accounts agree in affirming that this part of the Cape was comparatively well wooded a century ago. But notwithstanding the gr...eat changes which have taken place in these respects, I cannot but think that we must make some allowance for the greenness of the Pilgrims in these matters, which caused them to see green. We do not believe that the trees were large or the soil was deep here. Their account may be true particularly, but it is generally false. They saw literally, as well as figuratively, but one side of the Cape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is the crux of the moral pessimists: if they really wanted to promote their neighbor's redemption, then they would have to re...solve themselves to spoiling existence for him, and thus to being his misfortune; out of pity, they would have to--become evil!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But earthlier happy is the rose distilled Than that which, withering on the virgin thorn,... Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »