The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country.... It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity, ... [ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a ...direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults. A cult differs from a formal religion in many significant ways. It is in the nature of a cult to claim some esoteric knowledge which has been submerged (or repressed by orthodoxy) for a long time but has now suddenly been illuminated. There is often some heterodox figure, mocked or scorned by the orthodox, who presents these new teachings. There are communal rites which often permit or spur an individual to act out impulses that had hitherto been repressed. In the cult, one feels as though one were exploring novel or hitherto taboo modes of conduct. What defines a cult, therefore, is its implicit emphasis on magic rather than theology, on the personal tie to a guru or to the group, rather than to an institution or a creed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In order to get to East Russet you take the Vermont Central as far as Twitchell's Falls and change there for Torpid River Junction..., where a spur line takes you right into Gormley. At Gormley you are met by a buckboard which takes you back to Torpid River Junction again.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can ...be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting upon it from the outside to spur it to effort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates Change horses, making history change its tune,... Then spur away o'er empires and o'er states, Leaving at last not much besides chronology, Excepting the post-obits of theology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it... is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small that it scarcely admits of calculation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do--it's not so burningly important, after all, w...hat happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »