The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He rememb...ered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was duped ... by the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then suffic...iently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses ye...t lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Charles Foster Kane: You always said you wanted to live in a palace. Susan Alexander: Oh, a person could go crazy in this dum...p. Nobody to talk to, nobody to have any fun with. Charles Foster Kane: Susan. Susan Alexander: Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and lett...ing the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune... follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whatever else it may be--stimulus, tranquilizer, aural nipple, too of executives, Muzak is basically trivializing. It is not simpl...y that it relegates music to the province of wallpaper. Background music never need be banal. When it is used in support of drama, it can greatly enhance without harming itself. Mozart was entirely amenable to such films as Elvira Madigan and The French Lieutenant's Woman; Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote aptly for The Invaders, Arnold Bax for Oliver Twist, Sergei Prokofiev for Lieutenant Kije and Alexander Nevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich for others. In such uses, music collaborates with artists, it becomes an art among arts. But Muzak collaborates chiefly with management: it is used as an aural smoke-screen, a form of jamming, a hormone in the henhouse, an emollient in cemeteries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thought when I was a young man that I would conquer the world with truth. I thought I would lead an army greater than Alexander ...ever dreamed of. Not to conquer nations, but to liberate mankind with truth, with the golden sound of the word. But only a few of them heard, only a few of you understood. The rest of you put on black and sat in chapel. Why do you come here? Why do you? Dress your hypocrisy in black and parade before your God on Sunday. From love--no. For you've shown that your hearts are too withered to receive the love of your divine father. I know why you've come. I've seen it in your faces, Sunday after Sunday. Fear has brought you here. Horrible, superstitious fear. Fear of divine retribution. A bolt of fire from the skies. The vengeance of the Lord and the justice of God. But you have forgotten the love of Jesus. You disregard His sacrifice. Death. Fear. Flames. Horror. And black clothes. Hold your meeting then, but know if you do this in the name of good and the house of God, against Him and His word you blaspheme.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men of extraordinary success, in their honest moments, have always sung, "Not unto us, not unto us." According to the faith of the...ir times, they have built altars to Fortune, or to Destiny, or to St. Julian. Their success lay in their parallelism to the course of thought, which found in them an unobstructed channel; and the wonders of which they were the visible conductors seemed to their eye their deed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alexander Woollcott broadcasts the story of the wife who returned a dog to the Seeing Eye with this note attached: "I am sending t...he dog back. My husband used to depend on me. Now he is independent, and I never know where he is."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »