One of the most important things, to my mind, in English style is word-order. For us, the most emphatic place in a clause or sente...nce is the end. This is the climax; and, during the momentary pause that follows, that last word continues, as it were, to reverberate in the reader's mind. It has, in fact, the last word. One should therefore think twice about what one puts at a sentence-end. But in a German sentence this final position may be reserved, by a most curious grammatical convention, for an infinitive or past participle; or, in a subordinate clause, for the main verb. Thus logical emphasis, unless particularly strong, tends to be sacrificed to mere grammar.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we may remember what the Romans ... thought a cultivated person ought to be: one who knows how to choose his company among men..., among things, among thoughts, in the present as well as in the past.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driv...en to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In many ways chess ... is very like philosophy. Both have long histories which most practitioners are aware of and frequently cons...ult. The chess master is just as likely to be found replaying the past games of Morphy and Capablanca as the modern philosopher is to be found rehearsing the arguments of Descartes and Kant. Further, chess games, like philosophical problems, can often be sufficiently complex to defy complete analysis. It has been calculated that after only two full moves 71,852 legal positions can be reached, while the number of distinct forty-move games is the colossal figure of 25 x 10115. Chess is also similar to philosophy in possessing a number of long-standing unsolved problems. There is for white, however expert, no opening which will guarantee victory, and no response from black which can be relied upon to preserve him from defeat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since men do not really respect anything unless it was established long ago and has developed slowly over time, those who want to ...keep on living after their death must take worry not only about their future generations but even more about their past: that is why tyrants of all kinds (including tyrannical artists and politicians) like to do violence to history, so that it will appear as a preparation and stepladder to themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition... on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values.... Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sleeping man holds in a circle around him the thread of the hours, the order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctiv...ely upon awaking and in one second reads in them the point of the earth that he occupies, the time past until his arousal; but their ranks can be mingled or broken.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of sm...ell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moments of the past do not remain still; they retain in our memory the motion which drew them towards the future, towards a fu...ture which has itself become the past, and draw us on in their train.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »