What does headquarters think these guys came over here for, a sewing circle? They go up playing for keeps. Cops and robbers with r...ocks in the snowballs. Brass knuckles and lead pipes and a roughneck conviction they can lick any man in the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The law is not a "light" for you or any man to see by; the law is not an instrument of any kind. The law is a causeway upon which ...so long as he keeps to it a citizen may walk safely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distast...es, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind... of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one fro...m writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.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 »
Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, th...e school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Manners... and Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child receives data through the sense organs; the child also has some inborn processing capacities--otherwise it would not be ...able to learn--but in addition, some "information" or "programs" are built-in at birth (for example, the child does not have to learn how to suck, for this is an innate reflex); there is a working memory, in which the child keeps those items of knowledge that are being used at a particular moment; and there is a permanent memory, which is, in Locke's terms, largely a "blank tablet" at birth, but which has a storage capacity that makes a hard disk pale into insignificance. The child gradually builds up a symbolic representation of the world around it, so there must be some inner "language" or medium of representation; even a newborn baby is starting to see and taste and smell and hear and touch, and to remember the more striking of its experiences, so the internal medium by which it represents and stores these impressions cannot be the native language (of which it is still ignorant. Jerry Fodor [in The Language of Thought] has discussed this inbuilt "language of thought," which is similar conceptually to the "machine language" that is built into the personal computer and about which most users remain completely ignorant).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »