Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now h...igh time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blake and Goethe were individualists par excellence, uncompromisingly protective of their single vision. In both Faust Part II and... The Four Zoas, emphasis on the universality of the poet's message contrasts with the resistant texture of a compressed style and the striking complexity of the mythological machinery. Blake likes to emphasize that he is not writing for the simple-minded; Goethe takes a teasing pleasure in keeping philologists busy. Faust and The Four Zoas are dramatic epics of Humanity, but embodied in a mythic language whose uniqueness and quirkiness are jealously guarded. Blake never published The Four Zoas, though it culminates his early prophecies and provides the indispensable key to the later ones. And Goethe refused to allow Faust Part II to be printed in its entirety until after his death. Both poets postponed the public's discovery of their central works; secrecy was enforced as long as it could be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injust...ice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be an injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord's or a banker's?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden's election. Business prosperity does not, in ...my judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies. When they fail to come off its clergy simply say th...at they will be realized later on. Thus, if we have another boom, they will argue that the collapse of capitalism is only postponed. The fact that the greatest booms ever heard of followed Marx's formal prophecy of the downfall of capitalism is already forgotten, just as millions have long since forgotten the early Christian prophecy that the end of the world was at hand. The first Christians accepted postponements as docilely as the Communists of today.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All questions rely on the present for their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The word that is written may be postponed,... but not that on the lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportan...t duties and relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus is Paradise to be Regained, and that old and stern decree at length reversed. Man shall no more earn his living by the sweat ...of his brow. All labor shall be reduced to "a short turn of some crank," and "taking the finished articles away." But there is a crank,--oh, how hard to be turned! Could there not be a crank upon a crank,--an infinitely small crank? Mwe would fain inquire. No,--alas! not.... In fact, no work can be shirked. It may be postponed indefinitely, but not infinitely. Nor can any really important work be made easier by coöperation or machinery. Not one particle of labor now threatening any man can be routed without being performed. It cannot be hunted out of the vicinity like jackals and hyenas. It will not run. You may begin by sawing the little sticks, or you may saw the great sticks first, but sooner or later you must saw them both.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »