There is no country in which so absolute a homage is paid to wealth. In America there is a touch of shame when a man exhibits the ...evidences of large property, as if after all it needed apology. But the Englishman has pure pride in his wealth, and esteems it a final certificate. A coarse logic rules throughout all English souls: if you have merit, can you not show it by your good clothes and coach and horses?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a comman...ding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This whole business of Trade gives me to pause and think, as it constitutes false relations between men; inasmuch as I am prone to... count myself relieved of any responsibility to behave well and nobly to that person who I pay with money, whereas if I had not that commodity, I should be put on my good behavior in all companies, and man would be a benefactor to man, as being himself his only certificate that he had a right to those aids and services which each asked of the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we could have any security against moods! If the profoundest prophet could be holden to his words, and the hearer who is ready ...to sell all and join the crusade, could have any certificate that to-morrow his prophet shall not unsay his testimony!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing o...ut failed banks and failed savings and loans associations.... But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly we expect to maintain both a career and a family, but we expect excellence in one role will come at some cost to the oth...er. Certainly we would like to think we're entitled to . . . Caribbean vacations, but we're chastened by our minimal savings and the specter of our husbands losing their jobs. Certainly we want issues such as child care and family leave to be perceived as problems affecting all of us, not just women--but we recognize, too, that we must then all bear the burden of paying for them and making them work for the businesses upon which our economic survival is based.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never wear my best coat on a journey, though perchance I could show a certificate to prove that I have a more costly one, at lea...st, at home, if that were all that a gentleman required. It is not wise for a traveler to go dressed. I should no more think of it than of putting on a clean dicky and blacking my shoes to go a-fishing; as if you were going out to dine, when, in fact, the genuine traveler is going out to work hard, and fare harder,--to eat a crust by the wayside whenever he can get it. Honest traveling is about as dirty work as you can do, and a man needs a pair of overalls for it. As for blacking my shoes in such a case, I should as soon think of blacking my face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and raiment, but the unrighteous man found a facsimile of the same ...in God's coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting that the world has seen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... we Northerners have become too much driven by the idea that in twenty years we will live, not now: because by that time our sa...vings and the accrued interest will make it possible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »