If experience has established any one thing in this world, it has established this: that it is well for any great class and descri...ption of men in society to be able to say for itself what it wants, and not to have other classes, the so-called educated and intelligent classes, acting for it as its proctors, and supposed to understand its wants and to provide for them.... A class of men may often itself not either fully understand its wants, or adequately express them; but it has a nearer interest and a more sure diligence in the matter than any of its proctors, and therefore a better chance of success.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Aphorisms are essentially an aristocratic genre of writing. The aphorist does not argue or explain, he asserts; and implicit in hi...s assertion is a conviction that he is wiser and more intelligent than his readers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They can never have known old monks, wise, shrewd, unerring in judgment, and yet aglow with passionate insight, so very tender in ...their humanity. What miracle enables these semi-lunatics, these prisoners of their own dreams, these sleepwalkers, apparently to enter more deeply each day into the pain of others? An odd sort of dream, an unusual opiate which, far from turning him back into himself and isolating him from his fellows, unites the individual with mankind in the spirit of universal charity!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of s...oldiers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The elephant, not only the largest but the most intelligent of animals, provides us with an excellent example. It is faithful and ...tenderly loving to the female of its choice, mating only every third year and then for no more than five days, and so secretly as never to be seen, until, on the sixth day, it appears and goes at once to wash its whole body in the river, unwilling to return to the herd until thus purified. Such good and modest habits are an example to husband and wife.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best of America drifts to Paris. The American in Paris is the best American. It is more fun for an intelligent person to live ...in an intelligent country. France has the only two things toward which we drift as we grow older--intelligence and good manners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Music, theoretically considered, consists altogether of lines of tone. It more nearly resembles a picture or an architectural draw...ing, than any other art creation; the difference being that in a drawing the lines are visible and constant, while in music they are audible and in motion. The separate tones are the points through which the lines are drawn; and the impression which is intended, and which is apprehended by the intelligent listener, is not that of single tones, but of continuous lines of tones, describing movements, curves and angles, rising, falling, poising--directly analogous to the linear impressions conveyed by a picture or drawing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the minds of women were enlightened and improved, the domestic circle would be more frequently refreshed by intelligent convers...ation, a means of edification now deplorably neglected, for want of that cultivation which these intellectual advantages would confer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »