Crosby's fans talk about how "relaxed" he was, how "natural," how "casual and easygoing." By the time Presley began causing sensat...ions, the entire country had become relaxed, casual and easygoing, and its younger people seemed to be tired of it, for Elvis's act was anything but soothing and scarcely what a parent of that placid age would have called "natural" for a young man. Elvis was unseemly, loud, gaudy, sexual--that gyrating pelvis!--in short, disturbing. He not only disturbed parents who thought music was a soothing by Crosby, but also reminded their young that they were full of the turmoil of youth and an appetite for excitement. At a time when the country had a population coming of age with no memory of troubled times, Presley spoke to a yearning for disturbance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For pain is perhaps but a violent pleasure? Who could determine the point where pleasure becomes pain, where pain is still a pleas...ure? Is not the utmost brightness of the ideal world soothing to us, while the lightest shadows of the physical world annoy?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 »
We tried pathetic appeals to the wandering waiters, who told us "they are coming, Sir" in a soothing tone--and we tried stern remo...nstrance, & they then said "they are coming, Sir" in a more injured tone; & after all such appeals they retired into their dens, and hid themselves behind sideboards and dish-covers, still the chops came not. We agreed that of all virtues a waiter can display, that of a retiring disposition is quite the least desirable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water..., made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Research show clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants' fears and distress by soothing wor...ds and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child's hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer's high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You see, male man was made with five strong senses to gather the truth of things and his mind is a threshing floor to clean his tr...uth in. This is often an unhappy thing, for man sees himself as he really is. Thus he is made very miserable. But he does not destroy himself because the female man was made with squint eyes so that she sees only those things which please her. And her threshing floor is cramped and cluttered. She cannot separate the wheat from the chaff. But she achieves a harvest that makes her happy. When she sees man fleeing from her own dish and he is blindly and divinely happy. Ah, yes, the female companion of man has the gift of the soothing-balm of lies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hans Castorp loved music from his heart; it worked upon him much the same way as did his breakfast porter, with deeply soothing, n...arcotic effect, tempting him to doze.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »