...I never drink wine ... I keep my hands soft and supple ... I sleep in a soft bed and never over-tire my body. It is because whe...n my hour strikes I must be a perfect instrument. My eyes must be steady, my brain clear, my nerves calm, my aim true. I must be prepared to do my work, successfully if God wills. But if I perish, I perish.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation ...and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and pr...oviding for their bundance. Whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of "making a living;" such is the verdict of society, and the number of people, especially in the professions who might challenge it, has decreased rapidly. The only exception society is willing to grant is to the artist, who, strictly speaking, is the only "worker" left in a laboring society.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and provid...ing for their abundance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love is the most melodious of all the harmonies, and we have an innate feeling for it. Woman is a delicious instrument of pleasure..., but one must know the chords, study the pose of it, the timid keyboard, the changing and capricious fingering.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not think that literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has potency. So I work to te...ll the truth about people's lives; I work to celebrate struggle, to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community, to bring to center stage all those characters, just ordinary folks on the block, who've been waiting in the wings, characters we thought we had to ignore because they weren't pimp-flashy or hustler-slick or because they didn't fit easily into previously acceptable modes or stock types. I want to lift up some usable truths ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medi...um in which dead cities lie interred.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Opera once was an important social instrument--especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together... and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Napoleon has not been conquered by men. He was greater than any of us. God punished him because he relied solely on his own intell...igence until that incredible instrument was so strained that it broke.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »