[Oliver North is a] document-shredding, Constitution-trashing, Commander in Chief-bashing, Congress-thrashing, uniform-shaming, Ay...atollah-loving, arms-dealing, criminal-protecting, résumé-enhancing, Noriega-coddling, Social Security-threatening, public school-denigrating, Swiss-banking-law-breaking, letter-faking, self-serving, election-losing, snake-oil salesman who can't tell the difference between the truth and a lie.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why any quick-witted and sensitive person should feel ashamed of having said good-by to politics, he couldn't imagine. The sordid ...intrigues behind the scenes! The conscious or unconscious hypocrisy of every form of effective public speaking! The asinine stupidity of that interminable repetition of the same absurd over-simplifications, the same illogical arguments and vulgar personalities, the same bad history and baseless prophecy! And that was supposed to be a man's highest duty. And if he chose instead the life of a civilized human being, he ought to be ashamed of himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He saw Mr. Lincoln but once; at the melancholy function called an Inaugural Ball. Of course he looked anxiously for a sign of char...acter. He saw a long, awkward figure; a plain, ploughed face; a mind, absent in part, and in part evidently worried by white kid gloves; features that expressed neither self-satisfaction nor any other familiar Americanism, but rather the same painful sense of becoming educated and of needing education that tormented a private secretary, above all a lack of apparent force. Any private secretary in the least fit for his business would have thought, as Adams did, that no man living needed so much education as the new President but that all the education he could get would not be enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discr...iminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count ...for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication established across a house between two entire strangers, moves all the s...prings of wonder. The communication by the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity with nature. We look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self, and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession what inhabitant is there.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his ...unattained but attainable self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crow...n, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods loved him because men hated him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »