... the lesson to be learned from China's Confucianism could never be more significant for us than it is now. Its ethical aspects ...are a reminder which our Christian civilization needs if we are not to stand before the world as hypocrites who preach love while practicing the bitterest hatreds toward more rival orthodoxies and toward peoples whose skins are of a different hue. We shall, in fact, dig the gave of Western civilization unless we implement the faith that Confucianism and democracy have in common, namely, that ethics has its roots in man's relation to the universe, that morality comes into being through honest, clear-cut human relationships and cannot endure unless it is reflected in the patterns of daily life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the mass migrations now habitual in our nation are disastrous to the family and to the formation of individual character. It i...s impossible to create a stable society if something like a third of our people are constantly moving about. We cannot grow fine human beings, any more than we can grow fine trees, if they are constantly torn up by the roots and transplanted ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though of erect nature, man is far above the plants. For man's superior part, his head, is turned toward the superior part of the ...world, and his inferior part is turned toward the inferior world; and therefore he is perfectly disposed as to the general situation of his body. Plants have the superior part turned towards the lower world, since their roots correspond to the mouth, and their inferior parts towards the upper world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn't love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I f...elt without roots, like a man without a country ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In general, Machiavellism and Utopianism can be taken to be too sharply opposed; the one realistic and the other idealistic and dr...eamlike. Yet More's Utopia is an extraordinarily realistic book. It is, indeed, closer in attitude to The Prince than is generally conceded. More, like Machiavelli, was a statesman-writer who clearly perceived political reality and dealt with the actual problems of his time. He was also, like Machiavelli, a humanist who used classical models--in his case, Plato--as a means of going beyond the mirror-of-princes literature. He, too, tried to penetrate the causes of the political evils of his time and to offer concrete and carefully thought-out solutions in place of the conventional sentiments of the time. More's solutions, however, were vastly different from those of Machiavelli. They reflect the fact that he belonged to a different tradition from that of power politics followed by Machiavelli. More's tradition was one which, with its roots deep in Eng lish literature, went back to Chaucer and Langland. It is characterized by two traits: an intimate concern with the suffering of the common people, and a feeling that the state exists for its members.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Spindly branches of buttercups were secreted among gleaming stems still moist at the roots from last night's rain that had washed ...and refreshed the entire wood, had dowered it in poignant transparency, the unique, inconsolable quality of rainy countries, as if all was glimpsed through tears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are no black conservatives. Oh, there are neoconservatives with black skin, but they lack any claim to blackness other than ...the biological. They have forgotten their roots.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Jim," she said earnestly, "if I was put down there in the middle of the night, I could find my way all over that little town; and... along the river to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember all the little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out to trip you. I ain't never forgot my own country."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »