... the wife of an executive would be a better wife had she been a secretary first. As a secretary, you learn to adjust to the bos...s's moods. Many marriages would be happier if the wife would do that.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 »
FROM his shoulder Hiawatha Took the camera of rosewood,... Made of sliding, folding rosewood; Neatly put it all together. In its case it lay compactly, Folded into nearly nothing; But he opened out the hinges, Pushed and pulled the joints and hinges, Till it looked all squares and oblongs, Like a complicated figure In the second book of Euclid. This he perched upon a tripod-- Crouched beneath its dusky cover-- Stretched his hand, enforcing silence-- Said "Be motionless, I beg you!" Mystic, awful was the process. All the family in order Sat before him for their pictures: Each in turn as he was taken, Volunteered his own suggestions, His ingenious suggestions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read no bo...ok. Your remark would only fit your case, not mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is curious to speculate why pornography is considered especially likely to stimulate its readers into performing the activities... described. The literature of murder is a vast one, particularly in the English language; enormous ingenuity is expended by writers in devising techniques for killing people, and these techniques are described with the greatest possible realism. The motives which would make murder desirable or profitable are so elaborated that they could easily persuade a reader into whose hands these books would be likely to fall that their case was parallel with that described in the book so that their problems could be solved in the same way. But I have never seen it seriously suggested that the literature of murder--detective stories or crime stories--tended to deprave and corrupt, or would incite weak-minded or immature readers into carrying out in reality the activities described in the fantasies. On the contrary, the literature of murder is considered particularly "healthy" and desirable; and in England representatives of all the most respected professions have stated that detective stories are among their favorite reading. Musing about murder is apparently "healthy"; musing about sexual enjoyment is not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Having a book is somewhat like having a baby, as many woman writers have observed before me: the conception, the long preparation,... the wait, the growing heaviness (not of body in this case but of the spirit and the manuscript) toward the end, the initial delight at the sight of the product, fully formed and seemingly perfect, and then the usual postpartum depression. What will people whose opinion I care about, and those whose views I don't value but have weight in the world of reader, think of it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere cons...umption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a criterion were wanted for telling a novel from a fable or a tale or a romance (or a drama), a simple rule-of-thumb would be t...he absence of the supernatural. In fables and fairy tales, as everyone knows, birds and beasts talk. In novels, they don't; if you find birds and beasts talking in a book you are reading you can be sure it is not a novel. That takes care, for example, of Animal Farm. Men in novels may behave like beasts, but beasts in novels may not behave like men. That takes care of Gulliver's Travels, in case anyone were to mistake it for a novel. The characters in a novel must obey the laws of nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The speaker in this case is a middle-aged witch, me... tangled on my two great arms, my face in a book and my mouth wide, ready to tell you a story or two.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness everywhere and in ever...y age,--as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,--that, when I look over my commonplace-book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »