Some on commission, some for the love of learning, Some because they have nothing better to do Or because they hope these walls of... books will deaden The drumming of the demon in their ears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Science gives us the grounds of premises from which religious truths are to be inferred; but it does not set about inferring them,... much less does it reach the inference;Mthat is not its province. It brings before us phenomena, and it leaves us, if we will, to call them works of design, wisdom, or benevolence; and further still, if we will, to proceed to confess an Intelligent Creator. We have to take its facts, and to give them a meaning, and to draw our own conclusions from them. First comes Knowledge, then a view, then reasoning, then belief. This is why Science has so little of a religious tendency; deductions have no power of persuasion. The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma; no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have two kinds of "conference." One is that to which the office boy refers when he tells the applicant for a job that Mr. Blevi...tch is "in conference." This means that Mr. Blevitch is in good health and reading the paper, but otherwise unoccupied. The other type of "conference" is bona fide in so far as it implies that three or four men are talking together in one room, and don't want to be disturbed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television tells a story in a way that requires no imagination; the picture on the screen and the sound provide all we need to kno...w--there is nothing to fill in. Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure--not that it's passive, but that it offers so little opportunity for reflection and contemplation. At the beach--or reading a book, or listening to Vivaldi--our attention shifts from sight to smell to sound at will. The mind wanders in and out of the scene. The physical sensations stimulate thoughts, memories and reflections. These interruptions are an integral part of the experience of relaxing. Watching television, on the other hand, is focused, structured, and scheduled.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The time-use studies also show that employed women spend as much time as nonworking women in direct interactions with their childr...en. Employed mothers spend as much time as those at home reading to and playing with their young children, although they do not, of course, spend as much time simply in the same room or house with the children.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has to the book I a...m reading.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think "taste" is a social concept and not an artistic one. I'm willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else's living r...oom, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another's brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: "W...here was I before I was born." In the beginning was ... what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »