The differences between the youthful H.G. Wells and the mature Henry James were so basic and numerous that it seems almost miracul...ous that they ever knew each other well enough to have started a feud. James was fastidious and was preoccupied in many of his works with matters of taste and high society. Wells could be slovenly, considered James's taste artificial, and found any young scientist far more interesting than a room full of dukes and duchesses. James was an artist who seemed to feel the chief value of life was to give him subjects for his novels. Wells wanted to have a hand in reshaping life and constructing a new world, and considered his books merely useful tools toward these ends. James would agonize for hours over a single sentence, refining and refining it until sometimes only his most devoted readers cared to thread their way through the innumerable clauses he found necessary for communication of his exact meaning. Wells scoffed at such painstaking craftsmanship, and preferred to state his ideas so that even the slowest reader could follow him without difficulty. James was an artist, however tortured his sentences finally became. Wells was a propagandist, however skillfully he stated his sometimes complex ideas.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both in principle and in their private attitude toward mankind Johnson and Rousseau were irreconcilable opponents. Johnson had a v...oracious appetite for life, and was passionately concerned with the welfare of individual men and women; while Rousseau, although he was persuaded that he loved the human race, or would have loved it if he could, followed a solitary, self-centred course and, among a host of associates, protectors, disciples, made comparatively few friends whose opinions and support he valued. Here one remembers another literary dispute, held some hundred-and-fifty years later, when Henry James, writing to the youthful H.G. Wells, described their fundamental difference. "You," he explained, "don't care for humanity but think they are to be improved. I love humanity but know they are not!" Johnson, too, despite his capacity for deep affection, was a life-long pessimist; Rousseau, the suspicious and resentful exile, was an inveterate reformer, and launched the doctrine of "human perfectibility" that made so strong, and often so confusing, an appeal to English nineteenth-century Romantic poets. He was a teacher; but his chief aim was primarily to teach himself; if he desired to learn, he confessed, it was primarily in order to understand his own character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact... that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[James G. Blaine's] devotion to the public interests, his marked ability, and his exalted patriotism have won for him the gratitud...e and affection of his countrymen and the admiration of the world. In the varied pursuits of legislation, diplomacy, and literature his genius has added new luster to American citizenship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink:... Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by, Or any other reason why.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Philosophy can be compared to some powders that are so corrosive that, after they have eaten away the infected flesh of a wound, t...hey then devour the living flesh, rot the bones, and penetrate to the very marrow. Philosophy at first refutes errors. But if it is not stopped at this point, it goes on to attack truths. And when it is left on its own, it goes so far that it no longer knows where it is and can find no stopping place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shake off your heavy trance, and leap into a dance,... Such as no mortals use to tread, fit only for Apollo To play to, for the Moon to lead, And all the Stars to follow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people ... have uttered falsehoods so long, they ...have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be o...f any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »