In the evening my wife insisted to read this journal, and, finding in it such explicit instances of licentiousness, she was much a...ffected and told me that she had come to a resolution never again to consider herself my wife; though for the sake of her children and mine, as a friend, she would preserve appearances. When I saw her in great uneasiness, and dreaded somewhat--though not with much apprehension--her resolution, I was awaked from my dream of licentiousness, and saw my bad conduct in a shocking light.... She comforted me with hopes of my amendment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of ...belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A few ideas seem to be agreed upon. Help none but those who help themselves. Educate only at schools which provide in some form fo...r industrial education. These two points should be insisted upon. Let the normal instruction be that men must earn their own living, and that by the labor of their hands as far as may be. This is the gospel of salvation for the colored man. Let the labor not be servile, but in manly occupations like that of the carpenter, the farmer, and the blacksmith.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pes...tilent doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more less astonishing creeds is a moral offense, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, whic...h you say you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I [Boswell] ... insisted that admiration was more pleasing than judgment, as love is more pleasing than friendship. The feeling of... friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love like being enlivened with champagne. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The essence of spirit, he thought to himself, was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilou...s. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I met the first of my three or four successive wives in somewhat odd circumstances, the development of which resembled a clumsy co...nspiracy, with nonsensical details and a main plotter who not only knew nothing of its real object but insisted on making inept moves that seemed to preclude the slightest possibility of success. Yet out of those very mistakes he unwittingly wove a web, in which a set of reciprocal blunders on my part caused me to get involved and fulfill the destiny that was the only aim of the plot.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
General de Gaulle was a thoroughly bad boy. The day he arrived, he thought he was Joan of Arc and the following day he insisted th...at he was Georges Clemenceau.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. T...hat which I have ... insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »