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 »
There are certain things--as, a spider, a ghost, The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three--... That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most Is a thing they call the Sea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The sea--this truth must be confessed--has no generosity. No display of manly qualities--courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulne...ss--has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Others built beautifully and well, but fell... to lie like a bleached hull; other sea-cities have faltered and striven with the tide.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »