There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour.... The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn thread-bare in all common hands; who can say any thing new or striking, any thing that rouses the attention, without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not (in his public capacity) honour enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television was far more pervasive and radicalizing than printing had been. It was massive. When Riesman and others spoke of books,... magazines, and radio as mass media, they could not imagine the size and shape of television. There never had been a medium that could reach everybody, and reach them with images of behavior as behavior without the rationalization of words. The audience for its programs was drawn from every social class and every social element. By the mere act of watching television, a heterogeneous society could engage in a purely homogeneous activity. Television images are more rapid and transient than the printed word. They make no demand on us to remember or reflect on them. This impermanence and the time of consumption cause us to spend extended hours with the medium but significantly less time with any one image or sequence of images. Television is instantaneous and simultaneous: Everyone gets the message at the same time and, at the same time that an event is happening. There is no lag time between a reporter witnessing an event and reporting it, and no time for reflection and analysis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allu...sions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hereditary monarchy offers numerous advantages for America. It is the only form of government able to unify a heterogeneous people.... Thanks to centuries of dynastic marriage, the family tree of every royal house is an ethnic grab bag with something for everybody. We need this badly; America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. We can't go on much longer depending upon disasters like Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage-taking to "bring us together."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon th...is page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Definitions are like belts. The shorter they are, the more elastic they need to be. A short belt reveals nothing about its wearer:... by stretching, it can be made to fit almost anybody. And a short definition, applied to a heterogeneous set of examples, has to be expanded and contracted, qualified and reinterpreted, before it will fit every case. Yet the hope of hitting on some definition which is at one and the same time satisfactory and brief dies hard: much can be learned by seeing how much elasticity is ultimately required of such portmanteau definitions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »