Obviously, where art has it over life is in the matter of editing. Life can be seen to suffer from a drastic lack of editing. It s...tops too quick, or else it goes on too long. Worse, its pacing is erratic. Some chapters are little more than a few sentences in length, while others stretch into volumes. Life, for all its raw talent, has little sense of structure. It creates amazing textures, but it can't be counted on for snappy beginnings or good endings either. Indeed, in many cases no ending is provided at all. The kind of work that Maxwell Perkins did for Thomas Wolfe, or more recently, that Verna Fields did for Stephen Spielberg, doesn't get done in life. Even in a literary age like the nineteenth century it never occurred to anyone to posit God as Editor, useful as the metaphor might have been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we returned ... a Province man was betraying his greenness to the Yankees by his questions. Why Province money won't pass her...e at par, when States' money is good at Fredericton,--though this, perhaps, was sensible enough. From what I saw then, it appears that the Province man was now the only real Jonathan, or raw country bumpkin, left so far behind by his enterprising neighbors that he didn't know enough to put a question to them. No people can long continue provincial in character who have the propensity for politics and whittling, and rapid traveling, which the Yankees have, and who are leaving the mother country behind in the variety of their notions and inventions. The possession and exercise of practical talent merely are a sure and rapid means of intellectual culture and independence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individu...als, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not ea...t any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat no...t of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire. And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices tha...t will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a commonplace dauber, so I... don't intend to try any more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »