He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exa...ct than anything they may say. He is impelled by inertia, rather than curiosity, and nothing is more unlike the submissive apathy with which he hears his fate revealed than the alert dexterity with which the man of courage lays hands on the future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ordinary people think that talent must be always on its own level and that it arises every morning like the sun, rested and refres...hed, ready to draw from the same storehouse--always open, always full, always abundant--new treasures that it will heap up on those of the day before; such people are unaware that, as in the case of all mortal things, talent has its increase and decrease, and that independently of the career it takes, like everything that breathes ... it undergoes all the accidents of health, of sickness, and of the dispositions of the soul--its gaiety or its sadness.... As with our perishable flesh ... talent is obliged constantly to keep guard over itself, to combat, and to keep perpetually on the alert amid the obstacles that witness the exercise of its singular power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we get on television is not a headline service but a tabloid service. It takes that old format to its logical extreme, since ...manifestly television is all pictures, for which anchormen and reporters merely provide captions. Some stories, alas, cannot be illustrated. Usually they are the complicated and boring ones--about the economy or foreign policy, let us say. The inherent demand of the medium is to get through this stuff as quickly and painlessly as possible, cut from the talking heads to the crying heads (disaster victims, let us say, or political loonies), or better still, running feet or rapidly moving vehicles--explosions, riots. Like the tabloid journalists before them, the television crew is always on the alert for an emblematic figure and will thrust a moment of fame on anyone who is eyewitness to a disaster.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your ...life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or... shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At Passadumkeag we found ... earnest politicians, to wit,--white ones, I mean,--on the alert to know how the election was likely t...o go; men who talk rapidly, with subdued voice, and a sort of factitious earnestness you could not help believing, hardly waiting for an introduction, one on each side of your buggy, endeavoring to say much in little, for they see you hold the whip impatiently, but always saying little in much. Caucuses they have had, it seems, and caucuses they are to have again,--victory and defeat. Somebody may be elected, somebody may not. One man, a total stranger, who stood by our carriage in the dusk, actually frightened the horse with his asseverations, growing more solemnly positive as there was less in him to be positive about.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not regret my not having seen this before, since I now saw it under circumstances so favorable. I was in just the frame of mi...nd to see something wonderful, and this was a phenomenon adequate to my circumstances and expectation, and it put me on the alert to see more like it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionall...y mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly sa...y our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in... the pond at length begins to be honeycombed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel's chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »