In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand adve...rtising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, of all creatures we eat, we are most brutal to snails. Helix optera is dug out of the earth where he has been peacefully e...njoying his summer sleep, cracked like an egg, and eaten raw, presumably alive. Or boiled in oil. Or roasted in the hot ashes of a wood fire.... If God is a snail, Bosch's depictions of Hell are going to look like a vicarage tea-party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On starlight nights I used to pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, w...ith their storm-windows and covered back porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is surely a matter of common observation that a man who knows no one thing intimately has no views worth hearing on things in g...eneral. The farmer philosophizes in terms of crops, soils, markets, and implements, the mechanic generalizes his experiences of wood and iron, the seaman reaches similar conclusions by his own special road; and if the scholar keeps pace with these it must be by an equally virile productivity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How oft upon yon eminence our pace Has slackened to a pause, and we have borne... The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, While admiration, feeding at the eye, And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The university is no longer a quiet place to teach and do scholarly work at a measured pace and contemplate the universe. It is bi...g, complex, demanding, competitive, bureaucratic, and chronically short of money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women are most fascinating between the ages of thirty-five and forty, after they have won a few races and know how to pace themsel...ves. Since few women ever pass forty, maximum fascination can continue indefinitely.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This is my playes last scene, here heavens appoint My pilgrimages last mile; and my race... Idly, yet quickly runne, hath this last pace, My spans last inch, my minutes last point, And gluttonous death, will instantly unjoynt My body, and soule, and I shall sleepe a space,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nor at so fair a pace open the flower-petals... as your face bends down, while, breath on breath, your mouth wanders from my mouth o'er my face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »