Acts themselves alone are history.... Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your ...reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have this very moment finished reading a novel called The Vicar of Wakefield [by Oliver Goldsmith].... It appears to me, to be i...mpossible any person could read this book through with a dry eye and yet, I don't much like it.... There is but very little story, the plot is thin, the incidents very rare, the sentiments uncommon, the vicar is contented, humble, pious, virtuous--but upon the whole the book has not at all satisfied my expectations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dost thou ask what I mean by emancipation?... 1. It is "to reject with indignation, the wile and guilty phantasy, that man can hol...d property in man." 2. To pay the laborer his hire, for he is worthy of it. 3. No longer to deny him the right of marriage, but to "let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband," as saith the apostle. 4. To let parents have their own children, for they are the gift of the Lord to them, and no one else has any right to them. 5. No longer to withhold the advantages of education and the privilege of reading the bible. 6. To put the slave under the protection of equitable laws. Now, why should not all this be done immediately? Which of these things is to be done next year, and which the year after? and so on. Our immediate emancipation means, doing justice and loving mercy to-day--and this is what we call upon every slaveholder to do. I have seen too much of slavery to be a gradualist.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book ...dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know of no book which has come down to us with grander pretensions than this, and it is so impersonal and sincere that it is nev...er offensive nor ridiculous. Compare the modes in which modern literature is advertised with the prospectus of this book, and think what a reading public it addresses, what criticism it expects. It seems to have been uttered from some eastern summit, with a sober morning prescience in the dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and is as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mountains.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us begin by clearing up the old confusion between the man who loves learning and the man who loves reading, and point out that... there is no connection whatever between the two. A learned man is a sedentary, concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers. A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what it suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards--their crowns, th...eir laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble--the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
the vagabond began To sketch a face that well might buy the soul of any man.... Then, as he placed another lock upon the shapely head, With a fearful shriek, he leaped and fell across the picture--dead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »