You will recall the proud statement made recently by a Fascist general--"We have four columns in front of Madrid and a fifth insid...e the city."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a "suspension of belief." A poet must never make a statement simply because i...t is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally ...apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty..., an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why th...e writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The parent is the strongest statement that the child hears regarding what it means to be alive and real. More than what we say or ...do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as be...tween a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »