The temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the ...gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Great abilites are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are qu...iescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We humans undergo two major growth spurts: one during infancy and another from eleven to twelve until fifteen or sixteen--pubescen...ce. Between the two is a relatively quiescent growth period in which most of the body takes a rest from growing while the brain continues to mature. This period of life is general referred to as childhood or, sometimes, latency.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a brief time for sex, and a long time when sex is out of place. But when it is out of place as an activity there still sh...ould be the large and quiet space in the consciousness where it lives quiescent. Old people can have a lovely quiescent sort of sex, like apples, leaving the young quite free for their sort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Despair, I don't like you very well.... You don't suit my clothes or my cigarettes. Why do you locate here as large as a tank, aiming at one half of a lifetime?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both Leonardo and Newton had fecund imaginations from which poured forth a stream of discoveries, gadgets, engineering marvels, an...d farsighted contrivances. Newton invented the reflecting telescope, Leonardo the helicopter; Newton, the binomial theorem, Leonardo, the parachute, submarine, and tank. Newton's discover ies were expressed in equations. Leonardo's in drawings. Leonardo made many contributions to science, both in theory and application, but he is principally featured in art history classes. Newton wrote lengthy exegeses on alchemy, the mysteries of the Trinity, and the authority of the Bible, yet he is considered history's premier physicist.... Each man transformed the science of his day from one that held an essentially static view of the universe into one that included motion. The subject of motion consumed them both and their greatest contributions to humankind grew out of an intense curiosity about it. Newton's ambitious desire to explain celes tial movements resulted in the formulation of his three famous laws of motion and his discovery of the inverse square law of gravitation. Leonardo's compelling studies of the muscular movements of men and horses, exemplified in his cartoons for his Battle of Anghiari, are the most detailed anatomical descriptions of men and animals in motion that have ever been produced.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The careers of Napoleon and de Gaulle bear comparison, though it is always unwise to take such imposed similarities too far. But n...evertheless, both their careers were born out of social upheaval and military disaster. It is astonishing that Napoleon, a mere youthful artillery officer from despised Corsica, should have pulled together a country reeling from the horrors of revolution; survived the ignominy of defeat in Egypt; created a new France, constitutionally, legally, and organizationally; brought emperors and kings to their knees; allied himself through marriage with one of the proudest European dynasties; fought a series of impeccably planned and devastatingly executed campaigns; had the whole world within his grasp ... and, so very nearly, held it there. It is equally extraordinary that Charles de Gaulle, a brilliant though suspect tank commander, should have snatched from the fall of France a personal triumph. Who else, one wonders, could have continued to assert the position of himself and his country in the face of dislike and mistrust? Who else, like Napoleon returning from Elba, could have emerged from the self-imposed exile of Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises to restore France's confidence? Both men were seized with the concept of la gloire. Both took that concept to the ultimate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »