If its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an ala...rming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body, they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists, at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No matter how well-born, how intelligent, how highly educated, how virtuous, how rich, how refined, the women of to-day constitute... a political class below that of every man, no matter how base-born, how stupid, how ignorant, how vicious, how poverty-stricken, how brutal. The pauper in the almshouse may vote; the lady who devotes her philanthropic thought to making that almshouse habitable, may not. The tramp who begs cold victuals in the kitchen may vote; the heiress who feeds him and endows universities may not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and c...hild lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or madness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that the... spirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle habitable place; and night after night a man's bed..., it seemed, was laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open house.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature ...and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich... and varied in its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Next to reasoning, the greatest handicap to the optimum development of Man lies in the fact that this planet is just barely habita...ble. Its minimum temperatures are too low, and its maximum temperatures too high. Its day is not long enough, and its night is too long. The disposition of its water and earth is distinctly unfortunate (the existence of the Mediterranean Sea in the place where we find it is perhaps the unhappiest accident in the whole firmament). These factors encourage depression, fear, war, and lack of vitality. They describe a planet, which is by no means perfectly devised for the nurturing or for the perpetuation of a higher intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »