I have been too long acquainted with human nature to have great regard for human testimony; and a very great degree of probability..., supported by various concurrent circumstances, conspiring in one point, will have much greater weight with me, than human testimony upon oath, or even upon honour; both of which I have frequently seen considerably warped by private views.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No man is quite sane; each has a vein of folly in his composition, a slight determination of blood to the head, to make sure of ho...lding him hard to some one point which nature has taken to heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One point in my public life: I did all I could for the reform of the civil service, for the building up of the South, for a sound ...currency, etc., etc., but I never forgot my party.... I knew that all good measures would suffer if my Administration was followed by the defeat of my party. Result, a great victory in 1880. Executive and legislature both completely Republican.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connect...s one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no true expertise in the humanities without knowing all of the humanities. Art is a vast, ancient interconnected web-work..., a fabricated tradition. Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The one point on which all women are in furious secret rebellion against the existing law is the saddling of the right to a child ...with the obligation to become the servant of a man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point ... they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder ...and doing murder isn't that major.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point of view for the extremely compl...icated relationships of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter..., but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »