... the Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the ...only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...feminism never harmed anybody unless it was some feminists. The danger is that the study and contemplation of "ourselves" may b...ecome so absorbing that it builds by slow degrees a high wall that shuts out the great world of thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whenever we encounter the Infinite in man, however imperfectly understood, we treat it with respect. Whether in the synagogue, the... mosque, the pagoda, or the wigwam, there is a hideous aspect which we execrate and a sublime aspect which we venerate. So great a subject for spiritual contemplation, such measureless dreaming--the echo of God on the human wall!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Folk Art grew from below. It was a spontaneous, autochthonous expression of the people, shaped by themselves, pretty much without ...the benefit of High Culture, to suit their own needs. Mass Culture is imposed from above. It is fabricated by technicians hired by businessmen; its audiences are passive consumers, their participation limited to the choice between buying and not buying.... Folk Art was the people's own institution, their private little garden walled off from the great formal park of their masters' High Culture. But Mass Culture breaks down the wall, integrating the masses into a debased form of High Culture and thus becoming an instrument of political domination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What harm cause not those huge draughts or pictures which wanton youth with chalk or coals draw in each passage, wall or stairs of... our great houses, whence a cruel contempt of our natural store is bred in them?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do you know what Agelisas said, when he was asked why the great city of Lacedomonie was not girded with walls? Because, pointing o...ut the inhabitants and citizens of the city, so expert in military discipline and so strong and well armed: "Here," he said, "are the walls of the city," meaning that there is no wall but of bones, and that towns and cities can have no more secure nor stronger wall than the virtue of their citizens and inhabitants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money.... In fact, these are the only remarkable w...alls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sand is the great enemy here.... The sand drifts like snow, and sometimes the lower story of a house is concealed by it, thoug...h it is kept off by a wall. The houses were formerly built on piles, in order that the driving sand might pass under them.... There was a schoolhouse, just under the hill on which we sat, filled with sand up to the tops of the desks, and of course the master and scholars had fled. Perhaps they had imprudently left the windows open one day, or neglected to mend a broken pane.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the ...walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.... I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »