The Japanese are, to the highest degree, both aggressive and unaggressive, both militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and poli...te, rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave and timid, conservative and hospitable to new ways.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows o...ne big thing." Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defence. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance--and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.... Their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes; and without insisting on a rigid classifica tion, we may, without too much fear of contradiction, say that, in this sense, Dante belongs to the first category, Shakespeare to the second.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A broad consensus exists that Lincoln was more eloquent than Davis in expressing war aims, more successful in communicating with t...he people, more skillful as a political leader in keeping factions working together for the war effort, better able to endure criticism and work with his critics to achieve a common goal. Lincoln was flexible, pragmatic, with a sense of humor to smooth relationships and help him survive the stress of his job; Davis was austere, rigid, humorless, with the type of personality that readily made enemies. Lincoln had a strong physical constitution; Davis suffered ill health and was frequently prostrated with illness. Lincoln picked good administrative subordinates (with some exceptions) and knew how to delegate authority to them; Davis went through five secretaries of war in four years; he spent a great deal of time and energy on petty administrative details that he should have left to subordinates. A disputatious man, Davis sometimes seemed to prefer winning an argument to winning the war; Lincoln was happy to lose an argument if it would help him win the war.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field... for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasiona...lly lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's fairly obvious that American education is a cultural flop. Americans are not a well-educated people culturally, and their voc...ational education often has to be learned all over again after they leave school and college. On the other hand, they have open quick minds and if their education has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of a more rigid training.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see in you also there are movements, tremors, tears, desire for the melodious,... I salute your three violinists, endlessly making vibrations, Rigid, relentless, capable of going on for ever;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »