Enjoyment and being pleased can ... be distinguished first of all by the scope of their objects, that which a man may be said to e...njoy or to be pleased at, with or by. Thus one may be said to be pleased by almost any kind of thing: the result of the General Election, one's own success in keeping one's temper in trying circumstances, a new dress, the government's stand on pornography. On the other hand one can be said to enjoy only one's own activities and experiences: playing tennis, studying philosophy, sunbathing, being tickled.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a subject is highly controversial ... one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opin...ion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What one really wants is youth, and what one really loses is years. Life becomes at last a mere piece of acting. One goes on by ha...bit, playing more or less clumsily that one is still alive. It is ludicrous and at times humiliating, but there is a certain style in it which youth has not. We become all, more or less, gentlemen; we are ancien régime; we learn to smile while gout racks us.... We get out of bed in the morning all broken up, without nerves, color or temper, and by noon we are joking with young women about the play. One lives in constant company with diseased hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs; one shakes hands with certain death at closer embrace every day; one sees paralysis in every feature and feels it in every muscle; all one's functions relax their action day by day; and, what is worse, one's grasp on the interests of life relaxes with the physical relaxation; and, through it all, we improve; our manners acquire refinement; our sympathies grow wider; our youthful self-consciousness disappears; very ordinary men and women are found to have charm; our appreciations have weight; we should almost get to respect ourselves if we knew of anything human to respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast with envy, which usually occurs between two people and is focused upon another person's qualities or possessions, jeal...ousy occurs when a third person becomes a threat to a dyad. Jealousy involves the loss or the impending loss of a relationship that one wants to hold onto, a relationship that is vital to personal fulfillment and claimed as one's own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The colicky baby who becomes calm, the quiet infant who throws temper tantrums at two, the wild child at four who becomes serious ...and studious at six all seem to surprise their parents. It is difficult to let go of one's image of a child, say goodbye to the child a parent knows, and get accustomed to this slightly new child inhabiting the known child's body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of th...e heart, everything falls away except one's native State;Mneither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hold the value of life is to improve one's condition. Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling ...laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing, I am for that thing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity--it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's min...d.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In asking for a voice in the government under which we live, have we been pursuing a shadow for fifty years? In seeking political ...power, are we abdicating that social throne where they tell us our influence is unbounded? No, no! The right of suffrage is no shadow, but a substantial entity that the citizen can seize and hold for his own protection and his country's welfare. A direct power over one's own person and property, an individual opinion to be counted, on all questions of public interest, are better than indirect influence, be that ever so far-reaching.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is grossly selfish to require of one's neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should h...e? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »