I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term--meaning that the creation of a simple photo...graph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching--there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improveme...nt; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it. He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon. His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says, "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an ...author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is handsomer to remain in the establishment better than the establishment, and conduct that in the best manner, than to make a ...sally against evil by some single improvement, without supporting it by a total regeneration.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute or a subscripti...on of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a larger business; for a political party, or the division of an estate;Mwill you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every ...man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent's or guardian's roof till she... married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only perfect love to be found on earth is not sexual love, which is riddled with hostility and insecurity, but the wordless co...mmitment of families, which takes as its model mother-love. This is not to say that fathers have no place, for father-love, with its driving for self-improvement and discipline, is also essential to survival, but that uncorrected father-love, father-love as it were practised by both parents, is a way to annihilation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »