Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist--the only thing he's good for--is to take these handfuls of... confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning. Even if it's only his view of a meaning. That's what he's for--to give his view of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everybody thinks detectives do nothing but ask questions. But detectives have souls the same as anyone else.... You know, Mrs. Ber...agon, being a detective is like, well, like making an automobile. You just take all the pieces and put them together one by one. First thing you know you've got an automobile. Or a murderer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart m...y psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that's just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For let 'em be clumsy, or let 'em be slim, Young or ancient, I care not a feather;... So fill a pint bumper quite up to the brim, And let us e'en toast them together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When men consider the great pains, industry, and parts, that have, for so many ages, been laid out on the cultivation and advancem...ent of the sciences, and that notwithstanding all this, the far greater part of them remain full of darkness and uncertainty, and that, taking all together, a small portion of them doth supply any real benefit to mankind, otherwise than by being an innocent diversion and amusement: I say, the consideration of all this is apt to throw them into a despondency, and perfect contempt of all study.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They look quite promising in the shop; and not entirely without hope when I get them back into my wardrobe. But then, when I put t...hem on they tend to deteriorate with a very strange rapidity and one feels so sorry for them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English, besides being "good haters," are dogged and downright, and have no salvos for their self-love. Their vanity does not ...heal the wounds made in their pride. The French, on the contrary, are soon reconciled to fate, and so enamoured of their own idea, that nothing can put them out of conceit with it. Whatever their attachment to their country, to liberty or glory, they are not so affected by the loss of these as to make any desperate effort or sacrifice to recover them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Added man-made failure really hurts young children [under six]. No one has to contrive lessons for these youngsters so that they w...ill learn how to lose--they are losers too much of the time. No one has to put them in their place--they know all too well in their hearts the little place they are in. No one has to cut them down to size--their size is painfully small. At this stage in their development we are wise to stay away from competition, from games and races and contests with winners and losers. It matters too much to each child to come in first--they cannot stand the risk of competition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While yet alive, before their tints had faded, they glistened like the fairest flowers, the product of primitive rivers; and he co...uld hardly trust his senses, as he stood over them, that these jewels should have swam away ... for so long, so many dark ages;Mthese bright fluviatile flowers, seen of Indians only, made beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim there! I could understand better for this, the truth of mythology, the fables of Proteus, and all those beautiful sea-monsters,--how all history, indeed, put to a terrestrial use, is mere history; but put to a celestial, is mythology always.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »