The field maneuvers may be different from those in Holmes's day, and the villain is more socially mobile, but since Sir Arthur we ...have not changed the three essential ingredients of the private eye. He must be a bachelor, with the bachelor's harum-scarum availability at all hours (William Powell's marriage to Myrna "Nora" Loy, a wistful concession to the family trade, fooled nobody). He must have an inconspicuous fund of curious knowledge, which in the end is always crucially relevant. He must pity the official guardians of the law. Of course, the twentieth century has grafted some interesting personality changes on the original. Holmes was an eccentric in the Victorian sense, a man with queer hobbies--cocaine was lamentable but pardonably melodramatic--whose social code was essentially that of the ruling classes. He was, in a way, the avenging squire of the underworld ready to administer a horsewhipping to the outcasts who were never privileged by birth to receive it from their fathers. Bogart is a displaced person whose present respectability is uncertain, a classless but well-contained vagabond who is not going to be questioned about where he came from or where he is going. ("I came to Casablanca for the waters." "But there are no waters in Casablanca." "I was misinformed.")LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But with some small portion of real genius and a warm imagination, an author surely may be permitted a little to expand his wings ...and to wander in the aerial fields of fancy, provided ... that he soar not to such dangerous heights, from whence unplumed he may fall to the ground disgraced, if not disabled from ever rising anymore.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go;... A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,-- No matter, 't will never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:-- Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is, Wh...at is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, of from late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field of wheat, or a pasture for kine?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is all a question of sensitiveness. Brute force and overbearing may make a terrific effect. But in the end, that which lives li...ves by delicate sensitiveness. If it were a question of brute force, not a single human baby would survive for a fortnight. It is the grass of the field, most frail of all things, that supports all life all the time. But for the green grass, no empire would rise, no man would eat bread: for grain is grass; and Hercules or Napoleon or Henry Ford would alike be denied existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is not merely for today, but for all time to come that we should perpetuate for our children's children this great and free gov...ernment, which we have enjoyed all our lives.... I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Never in my life have I met anyone who did not agree that Emerson is an inspiring writer. One may not accept his thought in toto, ...but one comes away from a reading of him purified, so to say, and exalted. He takes you to the heights, he gives you wings. He is daring, very daring. In our day he would be muzzled, I am certain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days.... Such do no...t know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is, however, this consolation to the most way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that the path his feet describe is so p...erfectly symbolical of human life,--now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales. From the summits he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the vales he looks up to the heights again. He is treading his old lessons still, and though he may be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »