America is the world's living myth. There's no sense of wrong when you kill an American or blame America for some local disaster. ...This is our function, to be character types, to embody recurring themes that people can use to comfort themselves, justify themselves and so on. We're here to accommodate. Whatever people need, we provide. A myth is a useful thing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am a writer and a feminist, and the two seem to be constantly in conflict.... ever since I became loosely involved with it, it h...as seemed to me one of the recurring ironies of this movement that there is no way to tell the truth about it without, in some small way, seeming to hurt it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the lies would make it out that nothing Ever presents itself before us twice.... Where would we be at last if that were so? Our very life depends on everything's Recurring till we answer from within.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The new hero-type favored by Aschenbach, and recurring in his books in a multiplicity of individual variants, had already been rem...arked upon at an early stage by a shrewd commentator, who had described his conception as that of "an intellectual and boyish manly virtue, that of a youth who clenches his teeth in proud shame and stands calmly on as the swords and spears pass through his body ... the figure of Saint Sebastian is the most perfect symbol if not of art in general, then certainly of the kind of art in question.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only by being guilty of Folly does mortal man in many cases arrive at the perception of Sense. A thought which should forever free... us from hasty imprecations upon our ever-recurring intervals of Folly; since though Folly be our teacher, Sense is the lesson she teaches; since, if Folly wholly depart from us, Further Sense will be her companion in the flight, and we will be left standing midway in wisdom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence as it is, without meaning or aim, and yet recurring inevitably, wit...hout a finale in nothingness--"eternal recurrence."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[P]ermanent defenses are a non-recurring charge against governmental budgets while large armies continually rearmed with improved ...offensive weapons constitute a recurring charge. This, more than any other factor ... is responsible for governmental deficits and threatened bankruptcy. The way to disarm is to disarm.... [Congress and the President strive] for the improvement of social conditions, for the preservation of individual human rights, and for the furtherance of social justice.... It is in order to assure these great human values that we seek peace by ridding the world of the weapons of aggression and attack.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People who live in quiet, remote places are apt to give good dinners. They are the oft-recurring excitement of an otherwise unemot...ional, dull existence. They linger, each of these dinners, in our palimpsest memories, each recorded clearly, so that it does not blot out the others.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »