What makes this Generation of Vermin so very Prolifick, is the indefatigable Diligence with which they apply themselves to their B...usiness. A Man does not undergo more watchings and fatigues in a Campaign, than in the Course of a vicious Amour. As it is said of some Men, that they make their Business their Pleasure, these Sons of Darkness may be said to make their Pleasure their Business. They might conquer their corrupt Inclinations with half the Pains they are at in gratifying them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have to give ourselves--men in particular--permission to really be with and get to know our children. The premise is that takin...g care of kids can be a pain in the ass, and it is frustrating and agonizing, but also gratifying and enjoyable. When a little kid says, "I love you, Daddy," or cries and you comfort her or him, life becomes a richer experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depre...ssing to admit guilt and to repent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Englishman, hidden behind his hedge or wall, is not interested in his neighbor's house, and the idea of wanting to read about ...houses bought, sold, or built by total strangers is not even funny; it is merely absurd.... But to an American, it is not only important, it is comforting, it is gratifying that other people are improving your home town; even people who have no personal economic stake in the rise of real-estate values feel the same kind of interest that makes a motherly woman smile with genuine amiability on the children of total strangers. The very linguistic difference between "house" and "home" is significant. All Americans who live in houses, not apartments, live in homes; the Englishman lives in his home but all his neighbors live in houses or flats.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented wit...h flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a human circumstance that when we are born we have not yet come into existence. We are lured into our special human existenc...e by a mothering presence that gratifies our innate urges to be suckled, held, rocked, caressed. But that same gratifying presence puts limits on desire and rations satisfaction. In this sense the mother is also the first lawgiver.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pl...easure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The democratic youth ... lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to t...he flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practising gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »