What one really wants is youth, and what one really loses is years. Life becomes at last a mere piece of acting. One goes on by ha...bit, playing more or less clumsily that one is still alive. It is ludicrous and at times humiliating, but there is a certain style in it which youth has not. We become all, more or less, gentlemen; we are ancien régime; we learn to smile while gout racks us.... We get out of bed in the morning all broken up, without nerves, color or temper, and by noon we are joking with young women about the play. One lives in constant company with diseased hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs; one shakes hands with certain death at closer embrace every day; one sees paralysis in every feature and feels it in every muscle; all one's functions relax their action day by day; and, what is worse, one's grasp on the interests of life relaxes with the physical relaxation; and, through it all, we improve; our manners acquire refinement; our sympathies grow wider; our youthful self-consciousness disappears; very ordinary men and women are found to have charm; our appreciations have weight; we should almost get to respect ourselves if we knew of anything human to respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
to fasten into order enlarging grasps of disorder, widening scope, but enjoying the freedom that... Scope eludes my grasp, that there is no finality of vision, that I have perceived nothing completely, that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... to be successful a person must attempt but one reform. By urging two, both are injured, as the average mind can grasp and assi...milate but one idea at a time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What, then, is the basic difference between today's computer and an intelligent being? It is that the computer can be made to see ...but not to perceive. What matters here is not that the computer is without consciousness but that thus far it is incapable of the spontaneous grasp of pattern--a capacity essential to perception and intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What the hammer?What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?... What the anvil?What dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a ru...dimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life--subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality--no human being's education can have a safe foundation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On such a night, when Air has loosed Its guardian grasp on blood and brain,... Old terrors then of god or ghost Creep from their caves to life again;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... black progress and progress for women are inextricably linked in contemporary American politics, and ... each group suffers wh...en it fails to grasp the dimensions of the other's struggle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »