The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's own growing inne...r self.... The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and wh...irlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Miss Western: Tell me, child, what objections can you have to the young gentleman? Sophie: A very solid objection, in my opin...ion. I hate him. Miss Western: Well, I have known many couples who have entirely disliked each other, lead very comfortable, genteel lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Miss Western: Well, unless I am deceived, my niece is desperately in love. Squire Western: In love! In love! Without my conse...nt! I'll disinherit her, and turn her out of doors stark naked without a farthing. Where is she? Miss Western: Supposing she should have fixed on the very person you would have wished? Squire Western: No, no. She can love who she pleases, but she'll marry the man I chose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's a queer sensation, this secret belief that one stands on the brink of the world's greatest catastrophe. For it means the fall... of Western Europe, as it fell in the fourth century. It recurs to me every November, and culminates every December. I have to get over it as I can, and hide, for fear of being sent to an asylum.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The more I live here in western Europe, the more I am impressed by the sense of decay;Mnot the graceful and dignified decay of an ...oriental, but the vulgar and sordid decay of a bankrupt cotton-mill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Western hospitality prevails; it is reminiscent of the kind displayed earlier here by a host who said to an unexpected guest, "Str...anger, you take the wold skin and the chaw o' sowbelly--I'll rough it."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The writer in western civilization has become not a voice of his tribe, but of his individuality. This is a very narrow-minded sit...uation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For twenty-five centuries, Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not f...or the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible. Our science has always desired to monitor, measure, abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent: work noise, noise of man, and noise of beast. Noise bought, sold, or prohibited. Nothing essential happens in the absence of noise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing so...ciety for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity--advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »