Query: Whether the difference between a mere computer and a man of science be not, that the one computes on principles clearly con...ceived, and by rules evidently demonstrated, whereas the other doth not?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sometimes my wife complains that she's overwhelmed with work and just can't take one of the kids, for example, to a piano lesson. ...I'll offer to do it for her, and then she'll say, "No, I'll do it." We have to negotiate how much I trespass into that mother role--it's not given up easily.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.... I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For although memories, of a season, for example, Melt into a single snapshot, one cannot guard, treasure... That stalled moment. It too is flowing, fleeting; It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal, Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt, Harsh strokes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what... from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job; a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »