... whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over... wives. But you must remember that Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken--and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact... that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismis...s names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity--their links with their dead and the unborn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For it is not the bare words but the scope of the writer that gives the true light, by which any writing is to be interpreted; and... they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive no thing from them clearly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no com...bination of forces will easily overpower him.... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or "our" country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are f...ighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities, when I wishe...d to see himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the vagabond began To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.... Then, as he placed another lock upon the shapely head, With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture--dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »