The word which is best said came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a deed which the speaker could have bette...r done. Nay, almost it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent necessity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly with the substance of life and experience, they made him a fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of his action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn't prevent the ve...ssel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of ...life, on their faith in the Invisible--nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where by beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. ...Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can't stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn't legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero...; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the "tough guy;" today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,... A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing, ...never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And in the next instant, immediately behind them, Victor saw his former wife. At once he lowered his gaze, automatically tap...ping his cigarette to dislodge the ash that had not yet had time to form. From somewhere low down his heart rose like a fist to deliver an uppercut, drew back, struck again, then went into a fast disorderly throb, contradicting the music and drowning it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He repelled, a short tale to make, Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,... Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, Thence to a lightness, and by this declension, Into the madness wherein now he raves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »