Virtue, my pet, is an abstract idea, varying in its manifestations with the surroundings. Virtue in Provence, in Constantinople, i...n London, and in Paris bears very different fruit, but is none the less virtue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jum...p, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next--life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was--a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...men give us most rarely that which we really want, not favor, but--Justice. Nothing is easier than to coax them to pet us like ...children, nothing more difficult than to persuade them to treat us like responsible human beings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet b...aits. In larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For anyone addicted to reading commonplace books ... finding a good new one is much like enduring a familiar recurrence of malaria..., with fever, fits of shaking, strange dreams. Unlike a truly paludismic ordeal, however, the symptoms felt while savoring a collection of one man's pet quotations are voluptuously enjoyable ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest, noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has... been a mere appendage of his being, an instrument of his convenience and pleasure, the pretty toy with which he wiled [sic] away his leisure moments, or the pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Yes, single-parent families are different from two-parent families. And urban families are different from rural ones, and families... with six kids and a dog are different from one-child, no-pet households. But even if there is only one adult presiding at the dinner table, yours is every bit as much a real family as are the Waltons.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast. It keeps him young.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »