All ceremonies are in themselves very silly things; but yet, a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of Manners... and Decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The last man of the world-city no longer wants to live--he may cling to life as an individual, but as a type, as an aggregate, no,... for it is a characteristic of this collective existence that it eliminates the terror of death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom al...l the world hath flattered, thou only hath cast out of the world and despised. Thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America--rather, the United States--seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, f...eared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In past years, the amount of money that has had to be been spent on armaments, great and small, instead of on productive industry ...and agriculture and the arts, has been a disgrace to all of us in every part of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body or the human soul with the psychological properties, but the metaph...ysical subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks ...on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man can not open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So, this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of France, and of Europe, in 1814, was, "enough of him;" "assez de Bonaparte."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe, and gone to seed,-...-because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for th...ey know not what they should do.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is the foible especially of American youth,--pretension. The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. He does not... make a speech, he takes a low business-tone, avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, promises not at all, performs much, speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact. He calls his employment by its lowest name, and so takes from evil tongues their sharpest weapon. His conversation clings to the weather and the news, yet he allows himself to be surprised into thought, and the unlocking of his learning and philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »