Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has a good a right to be in deep aff...liction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will pa tronize in vain,--which taste cannot tolerate,--which ridicule will seize.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is at the same time by poetry and through poetry, by and through music, that the soul glimpses the splendors found behind the t...omb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to one's eyes, these tears are not the sign of excessive pleasure, they are rather witness to an irritated melancholy, to a condition of nerves, to a nature exiled to imperfection and which would like to seize immediately, on this very earth, a revealed paradise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... not only have we exploited them physically and economically to bring ease to our bodies and our purses, but also we have explo...ited them emotionally to bring us many sublimated satisfactions. Our relationship with Negroes is a many-stringed instrument upon which we play melodies to replenish all the empty places in our hearts.... The parent-child relationship is almost consciously acted out, with the obedience, seeming respect, and acceptance by "our Nigras" going far toward soothing heartaches for the rebellion, arrogance, and rejection we must endure as our real children seize their own lives from us in adolescence. Even the reverse, the child-parent role, is sometimes filled, as we play the part of babyhood helplessness, satisfying immature longings to be waited on and taken care of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed;... Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white--then melts for ever;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This American system of ours ... call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you like, gives to each and every one of us... a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many ...of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion, Scarce can endure delay of execution:--... Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my Soul in a moment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas ...Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long- wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »