When we say, 'George IV wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley,' we normally mean 'George IV wished to know wheth...er one and only one man wrote Waverley and Scott was that man'; but we may also mean: 'One and only one man wrote Waverley and George IV wished to know whether Scott was that man.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In chess we find several quite crisp distinctions that can also be discerned rather more problematically in the larger game of lif...e. There are, for instance, the "forced moves" in chess. Moves are occasionally forced by the rules of chess: in these instances one finds oneself so boxed in that one and only one legal move is available.... More interesting ... are the forced moves on those occasions when there is more than one legal move, but only one non-idiotic, non-"suicidal" move, which is said for that reason to be forced. It is forced not by the rules of chess, and not by the laws of physics, but by the dictates of reason. It is obviously the only rational thing to do, given one's interest in winning (or just not losing) the game.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise... man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are two kinds of men, and only two, and that young man is one kind. He is high-minded, he is pure, he's the kind of man that... the world pretends to look up to, and in fact despises. He is the kind of man who breeds unhappiness, particularly in women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I came here for one thing only, to try to help national Ireland--and if there is no such thing in existence then the sooner I pay ...for my illusions the better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One can only call that youth healthful which refuses to be reconciled old ways and which, foolishly or shrewdly, combats the old. ...This is nature's charge and all progress hinges upon it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see two dingy little rooms with "FOR LADIES" swinging over one and "FOR COLORED PEOPLE" over the other; while wondering under wh...ich head I come, I notice a little way off the only hotel proprietor of the place whittling a pine stick as he sits with one leg thrown across an empty goods box; and as my eye falls on a sample room next door which seems to be driving the only wide-awake and popular business of the commonwealth, I cannot help ejaculating under my breath, "What a field for the missionary woman."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You will not find science annihilating personality from the government of the Universe and making of God as ungovernable, unintell...igible, blind, often destructive physical force; you will not find jurisprudence formulating as an axiom the absurdity that man and wife are one, and that one the man--that the married woman may not hold or bequeath her own property save as subject to her husband's direction; you will not find political economists declaring that the only possible adjustment between laborers and capitalists is that of selfishness and rapacity--that each must get all he can and keep all that he gets, while the world cries laissez faire and the lawyers explain, "it is the beautiful working of the law of supply and demand;" in fine, you will not find the law of love shut out from the affairs of men after the feminine half of the world's truth is completed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »