If we focus mostly on how we might have been partly or wholly to blame for what might have been less than a perfect, problem- free... childhood, our guilt will overwhelm their pain. It becomes a story about us, not them. . . . When we listen, accept, and acknowledge, we feel regret instead, which is simply guilt without neurosis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We must bear in mind the distinction between fame and honor. A virtuous person is an honorable person, a person who ought to be ho...nored by the community in which he or she lives. But the virtuous person does not seek honor, being secure in his or her own self-respect. Lack of honor does not in any way detract from the efficacy of moral virtue as an indispensable operative means in the pursuit of happiness.... Those totally lacking in virtue may achieve fame as readily as, perhaps even more easily than those who are virtuous. Fame belongs to the great, the outstanding, the exceptional, without regard to virtue or vice. Infamy is fame no less than good repute. The great scoundrel can be as famous as the great hero; there can be famous villains as well as famous saints. Existing in the reputation a person has regardless of his or her accomplishments, fame does not tarnish as honor does when it is unmerited.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
only total expression ... expresses hiding: I'll have to say everything to take on the roundness and withdrawal of the deep dark: less than total is a bucketful of radiant toys.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley's poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life... is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is "a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of hi...s talent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating ...back to them, poisoned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, isn't Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else--and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be... a good Bohemian?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »