... overconfidence in one's own ability is the root of much evil. Vanity, egoism, is the deadliest of all characteristics. This va...nity, combined with extreme ignorance of conditions the knowledge of which is the very A B C of business and of life, produces more shipwrecks and heartaches than any other part of our mental make-up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anne of Austria (with great submission to a Crowned Head do I say it) was a B----. She had spirit and courage without parts, devot...ion without common morality, and lewdness without tenderness either to justify or to dignify it. Her two sons were no more Lewis the Thirteen's than they were mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is natural, now, to think of there being connected with a sign (name, combination of words, letter) besides that to which the s...ign refers, which may be called the reference of the sign, also what I should like to call the sense of the sign, wherein the mode of presentation is contained. In our example, accordingly, [an example in which lines a, b, and c all intersect at a single point] the reference of the expressions 'the point of intersection of a and b' and 'the point of intersection of b and c' would be the same, but not their senses. The reference of 'evening star' would be the same as that of 'morning star,' but not the sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of its [James A. Garfield's assassination] lessons, perhaps its most important lesson, is the folly, the wickedness, and the d...anger of the extreme and bitter partisanship which so largely prevails in our country. This partisan bitterness is greatly aggravated by that system of appointments and removals which deals with public offices as rewards for services rendered to political parties or to party leaders. Hence crowds of importunate place-hunters of whose dregs [the assassin] Guiteau is the type. The required reform [of the civil service] will be accomplished whenever the people imperatively demand it, not only of their Executive, but also of their legislative officers. With it, the class to which the assassin belongs will lose their occupation, and the temptation to try "to administer government by assassination" will be taken away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The A B C of being, The ruddy temper, the hammer... Of red and blue, the hard sound Steel against intimation the sharp flash, The vital, arrogant, fatal, dominant X.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have got to know what both life and death are, before we can begin to live after our own fashion. Let us be learning our a-b- c...'s as soon as possible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Before he has learned his a b c in the beautiful but mystic lore of the wilderness which Spenser and Dante had just begun to read,... he cuts it down, coins a pine-tree shilling (as if to signify the pine's value to him), puts up a deestrict schoolhouse, and introduces Webster's spelling book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, Philippe, he died because of his work. He was like an--like an explorer in a wild country where no one had ever been before.... He was searching for the truth, he almost found a great truth, but for one instant he was careless.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You've committed murder just as much as Hélène did. You killed a fly with a human head, she killed a human with a fly head. If s...he murdered so did you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »