Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there..., but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we will ask another because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever is had (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lanza del Vasto noted a deep connection between play and war, even before the games theory and nuclear war strategy became practic...ally identified. In our society, everything, in fact, is a game. But if everything is a game, then everything leads to war. Play is aimless and yet multiplies obstacles so that the "aim," which in fact does not exist, cannot be attained by the opponent. For instance, getting a ball in a hole. War is caused by similar aimless aims. Not by hunger, not by real need. War is a game of the powerful, or of whole collectivities devoted to self-assertion. It is "the great public vice that consists in playing with the lives of men." War plays with life and death, and does so magnificently. Everybody becomes involved. Everybody has to live or die--so that other side may not get a ball in a hole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world was a huge ball then, the universe a might harmony of ellipses, everything moved mysteriously, incalculable distances th...rough the ether. We used to feel the awe of the distant stars upon us. All that led to was the eighty-eight naval guns, ersatz, and the night air-raids over cities. A magnificent spectacle. After the collapse of the socialist dream, I came to America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a disease to which plays as well as men become liable with advancing years. In men it is called doting, in plays dating. ...The more topical the play the more it dates.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It does not follow ... that the right to criticize Shakespeare involves the power of writing better plays. And in fact--do not be ...surprised at my modesty--I do not profess to write better plays.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The form of act or thought mattered nothing. The hymns of David, the plays of Shakespeare, the metaphysics of Descartes, the crime...s of Borgia, the virtues of Antonine, the atheism of yesterday and the materialism of to-day, were all emanation of divine thought, doing their appointed work. It was the duty of the church to deal with them all, not as though they existed through a power hostile to the deity, but as instruments of the deity to work out his unrevealed ends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He saw Mr. Lincoln but once; at the melancholy function called an Inaugural Ball. Of course he looked anxiously for a sign of char...acter. He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism, but rather the same painful sense of becoming educated and of needing education that tormented a private secretary, above all a lack of apparent force. Any private secretary in the least fit for his business would have thought, as Adams did, that no man living needed so much education as the new President but that all the education he could get would not be enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »