The most important domestic challenge facing the U.S. at the close of the twentieth century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a ...vital social role for men. At stake is nothing less than the success of the American experiment. For unless we reverse the trend of fatherlessness, no other set of accomplishments--not economic growth or prison construction or welfare reform or better schools--will succeed in arresting the decline of child well-being and the spread of male violence. To tolerate the trend of fatherlessness is to accept the inevitability of continued social recession.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... not only have we exploited them physically and economically to bring ease to our bodies and our purses, but also we have explo...ited them emotionally to bring us many sublimated satisfactions. Our relationship with Negroes is a many-stringed instrument upon which we play melodies to replenish all the empty places in our hearts.... The parent-child relationship is almost consciously acted out, with the obedience, seeming respect, and acceptance by "our Nigras" going far toward soothing heartaches for the rebellion, arrogance, and rejection we must endure as our real children seize their own lives from us in adolescence. Even the reverse, the child-parent role, is sometimes filled, as we play the part of babyhood helplessness, satisfying immature longings to be waited on and taken care of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The history of theater from the medieval period until the nineteenth century has been in large part a history of further and furth...er separations of the scene of dramatic action from the physical situation of the audience. Even as the subject matter--in the plays of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Strindberg--became more and more continuous with the life of the audience, the stage itself pulled in its apron, emphasized its proscenium, and became a room with an invisible fourth wall, allowing the audience to look in, while keeping it more definitely outside. The progress of film was the reverse. From the stylized and theatrical settings of the early dramas, silent films moved into greater and greater involvement with the actors. Previously the audience saw actors from a distance, with a sense of tableau and formal separation. Although they seemed to be like us, they were not: silent, hieratic, caught in frightened frenzies of comedy, tragedy, and melodrama.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We came home from the ridotto so late, or rather so early, that it was not possible for me to write. Indeed we did not go ... till... past eleven o'clock: but nobody does. A terrible reverse of the order of nature! We sleep with the sun, and wake with the moon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by inte...rnal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In its use of words poetry is just the reverse of science. Very definite thoughts do occur, but not because the words are so chose...n as logically to bar out all possibilities save one. No. But because the manner, the tone of voice, the cadence and rhythm play upon our interests and make them pick out from among an indefinite number of possibilities the precise particular thought which they need. That is why poetical descriptions often seem so much more accurate than prose descriptions. Language logically and scientifically used cannot describe a landscape or a face. To do so would need a prodigious apparatus of names for shades and nuances, for precise particular qualities. These names do not exist, so other means have to be used.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your... desk in midair.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »