Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These pieces are strangers to each ot...her, and it takes a century, more or less, to make them thoroughly acquainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but at the end of fifty or hundred years gets tolerably dry and comparatively resonant. Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem? Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The poet has forced all these words together, and fastened them, and they don't understand it at first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at length the parts become knit together in such absolute solidarity that you could not change a syllable without the whole world's crying out against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could fore...tell achievement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A process in the weather of the world Turns ghost to ghost; each mothered child... Sits in their double shade. A process blows the moon into the sun, Pulls down the shabby curtains of the skin; And the heart gives up its dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The process of education in the oldest profession in the world is like any other educational process, in that it requires time and... effort and patience; it can only be acquired by taking one step at a time, though the steps become accelerated after the first few.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Henry B. Adams was the first in an infinite series to discover and admit to himself that he really did not care whether truth was,... or was not, true. He did not even care that it should be proved true, unless the process were new and amusing. He was a Darwinian for fun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair--a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its pa...rts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To recover a buried treasure without having it disappear miraculously in the process, one must be entitled to it, and also be will...ing--really willing deep in his heart--to share it with the poor and helpless. Buried money, especially silver, gives off a bright glow which comes right up through the earth and can be seen as a dim light on nights when the weather is misty or there is a gentle rain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timb...ers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go ...to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the... action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »