The formation of an oppositional world view is necessary for feminist struggle. This means that the world we have most intimately ...known, the world in which we feel "safe" ... must be radically changed. Perhaps it is the knowledge that everyone must change, not just those we label enemies or oppressors, that has so far served to check our revolutionary impulses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those who were skillful in Anatomy among the Ancients, concluded from the outward and inward Make of an Human Body, that it was th...e Work of a Being transcendently Wise and Powerful. As the World grew more enlightened in this Art, their Discoveries gave them fresh Opportunities of admiring the Conduct of Providence in the Formation of an Human Body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the... action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for th...eir reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the ex...ceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So little are the Homeric heroes presented as developing or having developed, that most of them--Nestor, Agamemnon, Achilles--appe...ar to be of an age fixed from the very first. Even Odysseus, in whose case the long lapse of time and the many events which occurred offer so much opportunity for biographical development, shows almost nothing of it. Odysseus on his return is exactly the same as he was when he left Ithaca two decades earlier. But what a road, what a fate, lie between the Jacob who cheated his father out of his blessing by a wild beast!--between David the harp player, persecuted by his lord's jealousy, and the king, surrounded by violent intrigues, whom Abishag the Shunnamite warmed in his bed, and he knew her not! The old man, of whom we know how he has become what he is, is more of an individual than the young man; for it is only in the course of an eventful life that men are differentiated into full individuality; and it is this history of a personality which the Old Testament presents to us as the formation undergone by those whom God has chosen as his examples.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Terrorism is an intolerant reaction to the hypertolerance of our societies, just as rape may be an intolerance of our boundless se...xual tolerance (paradoxically, the number of rapes increases with the degree of sexual liberation). It is second-generation violence--a reaction to the absence of violence. The same is true of the second-generation illnesses (cancer); they are a reaction to the hyperprotection of our bodies. When a woman turns off all signals of pleasure in your arms and leaves you no other solution but a disenchanted rape, no phantasy is of any use. But the same applies when her sexual demand is so great as to leave no room even for the illusion of rape.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An actor must communicate his author's given message--comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confr...onted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a wonderful, but neglected precision in these words. The old English noun "travel" (in the sense of a journey) was origin...ally the same word as "travail" (meaning "trouble," "work," or "torment").... Significantly, too, the word "tour" in "tourist" was derived by back-formation from the Latin "tornus," which in turn came from the Greek word for a tool describing a circle. The traveler, then was working at something; the tourist was a pleasure-seeker. The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »