I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr.... Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both were predominantly ethical in aim and doctrine; theory of knowledge (logic) and of nature (physics) served rather as the scaf...folding rather than as an integral portion of their philosophic structure, while metaphysics, the kernel of Platonic and Aristotelian speculation, receded altogether into the background.... When we ask as to the nature of the philosophic life, the two schools give widely different answers. To the Stoic, it consists in following virtue, in obedience to an authoritative law of nature or reason; the sage, by subjugating emotion, and by detachment from the restless world of circumstance, disciplines his soul to self-sufficiency and inward independence. To the Epicurean, the good life is that of rational enjoyment of all the satisfactions which the world affords.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Boasting is often carried by certain Americans to the extreme. Often however it is a reaction against slights, an effort to veil d...eficiencies, an effort made by a people aware of them, but on the other hand conscious of having accomplished in two or three generations what it took other nations centuries to perform. Generally, human nature revolts at taunts, at arrogant reproof, at undervaluation. Experience and time alone teach a becoming equanimity. European nations bear scoffing more patiently because they have thrown it occasionally for centuries at each other's head. Like old war horses accustomed to the roar of battles, they remain cool and self-possessed. There is on the American surface much to be rubbed off and rounded. Rude angles are to be soft ened, ease, flexibility instilled. Time must do the work. Refinement is a fruit slowly ripened by ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
General de Gaulle was a thoroughly bad boy. The day he arrived, he thought he was Joan of Arc and the following day he insisted th...at he was Georges Clemenceau.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In France, and at the most important period of our history, Catherine de' Medici has suffered more from popular error than any oth...er woman, unless it be Brunehaut or Frédégonde; while Marie de' Medici, whose every action was prejudicial to France, has escaped the disgrace that should cover her name.... Catherine de' Medici ... saved the throne of France, she maintained [the] Royal authority under circumstances to which more than one great prince would have succumbed. Face to face with such leaders of the factions and ambitions of the houses of Guise and of Bourbon as the two Cardinals de Lorraine and the two "Balafrès," the two Princes de Condé, Queen Jeanne d'Albret, Henri IV, the Connétable de Montmorency, Calvin, the Colignys and Théodore de Bèze, she was forced to put forth the rarest fine qualities, the most essential gifts of statesmanship, under the fire of the Calvinist press.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a social respect necessary in company: you may start your own subject of conversation with modesty, taking care, however,... de ne jamais parler de cordes dans la maison d'un pendu.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Et Saint Apollinaire, raide et ascétique, Vieille usine désaffectée de Dieu, tient encore... Dans ses pierres éecroulantes la forme précise de Byzance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »