The hill farmer ... always seems to make out somehow with his corn patch, his few vegetables, his rifle, and fishing rod. This sel...f-contained economy creates in the hillman a comparative disinterest in the world's affairs, along with a disdain of lowland ways. "I don't go to question the good Lord in his wisdom," runs the phrasing attributed to a typical mountaineer, "but I jest cain't see why He put valleys in between the hills."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Athletes and actors--let actors stand for the set of performing artists--share much. They share the need to make gesture as fluid ...and economical as possible, to make out of a welter of choices the single, precisely right one. They share the need for impeccable and split-second timing. They share the need for thousands of hours of practice in order to train the body to become the perfect, instinctive instrument to express. Both athlete and actor, out of that congeries of emotion, choice, strategy, knowledge of terrain, mood of spectators, condition of spectators in the ensemble, secret awareness of injury or weakness, and as nearly an absolute concentration as possible so that all externalities are integrated, all distraction absorbed to the self, must be able to change the self so successfully that it changes us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You slam a politician, you make out he's the devil, with horns and hoofs. But his wife loves him, and so did all his mistresses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One might compare the journey of the soul to mystical union, by way of pure faith, to the journey of a car on a dark highway. The ...only way the driver can keep to the road is by using his headlights. So in the mystical life, reason has its function. The way of faith is necessarily obscure. We drive by night. Nevertheless our reason penetrates the darkness enough to show us a little of the road ahead. It is by the light of reason that we interpret the signposts and make out the landmarks along our way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man is exceedingly well defended against himself, against being scouted out and besieged by himself, and he is usually able to mak...e out no more of himself than his outer fortifications. The actual fortress is inaccessible to him, even invisible, unless his friends and enemies turn traitor to him and lead him there by secret paths.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, s...tudies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »