Americans living in England are remarkably consistent in their reactions to the English. Most of them are hurt and puzzled because... they were brought up on American neighboring patterns and don't interpret the English ones correctly. In England propinquity means nothing. The fact that you live next door to a family does not entitle you to visit, borrow from, or socialize with them, or your children to play with theirs.... To the best of my knowledge, those who have tried to relate to the English purely on the basis of propinquity seldom if ever succeed. They may get to know and even like their neighbors, but it won't be because they live next door, because English relationships are patterned not according to space but according to social status.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express... feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[I] am now struggling to enter the portals of the profession in which is locked up the passport which is to conduct me to all that... I am destined to receive in life. The entrance is steep and difficult, but my chiefest obstacles are within myself. If I knew and could master myself, all other difficulties would vanish. To overcome long-settled habits, one has almost to change "the stamp of nature"; but bad habits must be changed and good ones formed in their stead, or I shall never find the pearls I seek.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a generation watches the young ones, their future, their responsibility, grow up, and when what they are to inherit is pitifu...l and so reduced, then the shame of it goes too deep for reasoning. No, it was not our fault that our children had to learn such hardship, had to forego so much that we, the older ones, had inherited. Our fault it was not; but we felt that it was. We were learning, we old ones, that in times when a species, a race, is under threat, drives and necessities built into the very substance of our flesh speak out in ways that we need never have known about if extremities had not come to squeeze these truths out of us. An older, a passing, generation needs to hand on goodness, something fine and high--even if it is only in potential--to their children. And if there isn't this bequest to put into their hands, then there is a bitterness and a pain that makes it hard to look into young eyes, young faces.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lanza del Vasto noted a deep connection between play and war, even before the games theory and nuclear war strategy became practic...ally identified. In our society, everything, in fact, is a game. But if everything is a game, then everything leads to war. Play is aimless and yet multiplies obstacles so that the "aim," which in fact does not exist, cannot be attained by the opponent. For instance, getting a ball in a hole. War is caused by similar aimless aims. Not by hunger, not by real need. War is a game of the powerful, or of whole collectivities devoted to self-assertion. It is "the great public vice that consists in playing with the lives of men." War plays with life and death, and does so magnificently. Everybody becomes involved. Everybody has to live or die--so that other side may not get a ball in a hole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout-fishers from distant cities had arrived before us, and where, to our aston...ishment, the settlers dropped in at nightfall to have a chat and hear the news, though there was but one road, and no other house was visible,--as if they had come out of the earth. There we sometimes read old newspapers, who never before read new ones, and in the rustle of their leaves heard the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore, instead of the sough of the wind among the pines. But then walking had given us an appetite even for the least palatable and nutritious food.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How we shall earn our bread is a grave question; yet it is a sweet and inviting question. Let us not shirk it, as is usually done.... It is the most important and practical question which is put to man. Let us not answer it hastily. Let us not be content to get our bread in some gross, careless, and hasty manner. Some men go a-hunting, some a-fishing, some a-gaming, some to war; but none have so pleasant a time as they who in earnest seek to earn their bread.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, ...for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »