My speaking is irregular. Sometimes quite good, sometimes not, but generally will do.... I am too far along in experience and year...s both for this business. I do not go into [it] with the zest of old times. Races, baseball, and politics are for the youngsters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it p...roduces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing "other," ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other--and then it becomes meaningless. This is why the clinical profile of narcissism is not of a state of activity, but of a state of being. There are erased the demarcations, limits, and forms of time as well as relationship. The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking for an expression or reflection of himself in Experience, he devalues each particular interaction or scene, because it is never enough to encompass who he is. The myth of Narcissus neatly captures this: one drowns in the self--it is an entropic state.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself a...nd yet never escapes itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience; and the only fulfillment we can speak of is ...the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncr...eated conscience of my race.... Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The experience of the gangster as an experience of art is universal to Americans. There is almost nothing we understand better or ...react to more readily or with quicker intelligence.... In ways that we do not easily or willingly define, the gangster speaks for us, expressing that part of the American psyche which rejects the qualities and the demands of modern life, which rejects "Americanism" itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of i...t? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education. I most sincerely wish ... that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging learning and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it is only after years and years that you can speak of penury in the midst of opulence, of hunger in the midst of almost sinfu...l plenty. You must never speak of the immediate experience unless and until you have learned its consequent value. Otherwise you grow old in bitterness which is barren and futile....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »