Everything that was ever to happen to me in the future had its germ or impulse in the conditions of my life on Dover Street. My fr...iendships, my advantages and disadvantages, my gifts, my habits, my ambitions--these were the materials out of which I built my after life, in the open workshop of America. My days in the slums were pregnant with possibilities; it only needed the ripeness of events to make them fruit forth in realities. Steadily as I worked to win America, America advanced to lie at my feet. I was an heir, on Dover Street, awaiting maturity. I was a princess waiting to be led to the throne.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After which you led me to water And bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness.... You would not let me out for two days and three nights, Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grasses As if reading had any interest for me ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All is changed. All looks strange to me and gives me a feeling which I would rather get away from, although I know it to be the ca...rrying out of natural laws. And I am not complaining. I am doing the same as many old people have done, I suppose, who have led an active life and suddenly find themselves living without a purpose. Oh, my heart is so full. I could write a big book on the subject of going out of this world gracefully.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat hole: she knelt down and looked along... the passage into the lovliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head through the doorway.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to ...let them speak for themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the f...irst the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind--men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh--who founded the English colonies in America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Darwin was, like Copernicus, a one-idea man. Each had his "nuclear inspiration" early in life, and spent the rest of his life work...ing it out--the ratio of inspiration to perspiration being heavily in favor of the second. Both lacked the many-sidedness, that universality of interest and amazing multitude of achievement in unrelated fields of research which characterised Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of lesser but equally versatile geniuses. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Darwin and Copernicus, after the decisive turning point when their course was set, led a life of duty, devotion to task, rigorous self-discipline, and spiritual desiccation. It looks as if the artesian wells of their inspiration had been replaced by a mechanical water supply kept under pressure by sheer power of will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The small perplexities of small minds eddy and boil about you. Confident from the experience that has led you out of these same da...ngers, you attack each problem as it appears, unafraid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Despite the great differences in the objectives of the two men, there are important similarities between them. The most obvious on...es are in the area of personality. Both presidents had a quick smile and a pleasant air about them. People liked Roosevelt, as they did Reagan, almost without regard for his policies.... Both men led charmed political lives, in which they were praised for everything people liked, while the blame for all problems fell on others. FDR was a "Teflon president" long before Teflon was invented. After Roosevelt had won re-election to a second term, he had the temerity to point out that "one-third of the nation" was "ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." And in his re-election campaign in 1984, Reagan continued to run against the "gov-mint," as he disdainfully pronounced it, even after having been in charge of it for nearly four years. And Franklin Roosevelt was the first "media president," clearly deserving the title "Great Communicator." He charmed radio listeners much as Reagan did his television audiences.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Looks like we got a trial ahead of us. But it's not the first time. We've had to go it alone before, and we'll have to go it alone... again. We're tough. We've had to be tough ever since Brother Brigham led our people across the plain. Well, they survived and I dang it, we'll, well, we'll survive too. Now put out your fires and get to your wagons.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »