Write to the point: say immediately what you want to say most, even if it doesn't "come first." There are three reasons for doing ...this. First, you will then have said it, even if nothing else gets said. Second, your readers will then have read it, even if they read no more. Third, having said it, you are likely to have to say something more, because you will have to explain and justify what you chose to say.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lonesome? God, no! From the day the kids are born, if it's not one thing, it's another. After all those years of being responsible... for them, you finally get to the point where you want to scream: "Fall out of the nest already, you guys, will you? It's time."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Modern theories of mental dysfunction led to the elimination of witches from our serious ontology. The concepts of folk psychology...--belief, desire, fear, sensation, pain, joy, and so on--await a similar fate, according to the view at issue. And when neuroscience has matured to the point where the poverty of our current conceptions is apparent to everyone, and the superiority of the new framework is established, we shall then be able to set about reconceiving our internal states and activities, within a truly adequate conceptual framework at last.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and sh...aved it down till the average is three and a half.... I never write "metropolis" for seven cents, because I can get the same money for "city." I never write "policeman," because I can get the same price for "cop." ... I never write "valetudinarian" at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When women reach the age of maturity, Mother Nature sometimes overworks their frustration to the point of irrationalism. Like the ...middle-aged man...who finds himself looking longingly at a girl in her early twenties.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It used to be said that, socially speaking, Philadelphia asked who a person is, New York how much is he worth, and Boston what doe...s he know. Nationally it has now become generally recognized that Boston Society has long cared even more than Philadelphia about the first point and has refined the asking of who a person is to the point of demanding to know who he was. Philadelphia asks about a man's parents; Boston wants to know about his grandparents.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ellipse is as aimless as that, Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear... In our present. Its flexing is its account, Return to the point of no return.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which de...grades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art.... If you try to run away from it, if you are s...cared to go to the brink, you are lost.... We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »