Boasting is often carried by certain Americans to the extreme. Often however it is a reaction against slights, an effort to veil d...eficiencies, an effort made by a people aware of them, but on the other hand conscious of having accomplished in two or three generations what it took other nations centuries to perform. Generally, human nature revolts at taunts, at arrogant reproof, at undervaluation. Experience and time alone teach a becoming equanimity. European nations bear scoffing more patiently because they have thrown it occasionally for centuries at each other's head. Like old war horses accustomed to the roar of battles, they remain cool and self-possessed. There is on the American surface much to be rubbed off and rounded. Rude angles are to be soft ened, ease, flexibility instilled. Time must do the work. Refinement is a fruit slowly ripened by ages.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;" "reaction is equal to action;" "th...e smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One current reaction to change in families, for example, is the proposal for more "education for parenthood," on the theory that t...his training will not only teach specific skills such as how to change diapers or how to play responsively with toddlers, but will raise parents' self-confidence at the same time. The proposed cure, in short, is to reform and educate the people with the problem.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ultimately the two men are united by their reaction to the French Revolution, for it was Rousseau's explosive concept of the Gener...al Will coupled with the breakdown of the social order which in the long run created both Emperor and Fuhrer. The former ensured the demolition of Christian Europe, while the latter completed it.... Napoleon saw himself as offering a via media between the ancien regime and the Terror. He claimed to have "cleansed" the revolution, combining with it what was best from the past, morally regenerated by Revolutionary ideals. Yet for all his protestations, he accepted the Revolution only because it made his career possible, and because those who had profited from it were ready to support his regime. Similarly, Hitler argued that he was steering a middle path between capitalism and Marxism. National Socialists claimed that their political and social programme had thwarted the machinations of international finance, while at the same time defeating the evil consequences of the French Revolution as embodied in its children--liberalism and, above all, Bolshevism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you ...can fool all of the people all of the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair--a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its pa...rts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.... ... Stars of Death stood over us, and innocent Russia squirmed under the bloody boots, under the wheels of black Marias.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem... From insignificance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematis...ing the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray's Anatomy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »