There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows o...ne big thing." Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance--and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.... Their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classifica tion, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fox, he felt, had never seen his past disposed of like a fall of water. He had never measured off his day in moments: another-...-another--another. But now, thrown down so deeply in himself, into the darkness of the well, surprised by pain and hunger, might he not revert to an earlier condition, regain capacities which formerly were useless to him, pass from animal to Henry, become human in his prison, X his days, count, wait, listen for another--another--another--another?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Coming about its own business Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox... It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A real fox calls sour not only those grapes that he cannot reach but also those that he has reached and taken away from others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We follow where the Swamp Fox guides, His friends and merry men are we;... And when the troop of Tarleton rides, We burrow in the cypress tree. The turfy hammock is our bed, Our home is in the red deer's den, Our roof, the tree-top overhead, For we are wild and hunted men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »