As for the peasant populations of a great part of the world, they aren't so much anxious as hungry. They aren't anxious about whet...her they will get a salary raise, or which of the three colleges of their choice they will be admitted to, or whether to buy a Ford or Cadillac, or whether the kind of TV set they want is too expensive. They are hungry, cold and, in many parts of the world, they dread that local warfare, bandits, political coups may endanger their homes, their meager livelihoods and their lives. But surely they are not anxious. For anxiety, as we have come to use it to describe our characteristic state of mind, can be contrasted with the active fear of hunger, loss, violence and death. Anxiety is the appropriate emotion when the immediate personal terror--of a volcano, an arrow, the sorcerer's spell, a stab in the back and other calamities, all directed against one's self--disappears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why am I so determined to put the shoulder where it belongs? Women have very round shoulders that push forward slightly; this touc...hes me and I say: "One must not hide that!" Then someone tells you: "The shoulder is on the back." I've never seen women with shoulders on their backs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in part...icular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging ove...r it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... when the right of the individual is made sacred, when the image of God in human form, whether in marble or in clay, whether in... alabaster or in ebony, is consecrated and inviolable, when men have been taught to look beneath the rags and grime, the pomp and pageantry of mere circumstance and have regard unto the celestial kernel uncontaminated at the core,--when race, color, sex, condition, are realized to be the accidents, not the substance of life, and consequently as not obscuring or modifying the inalienable title to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,--then is mastered the science of politeness, the art of courteous contact, which is naught but the practical application of the principal [sic] of benevolence, the back bone and marrow of all religion; then woman's lesson is taught and woman's cause is won--not the white woman nor the black woman nor the red woman, but the cause of every man or woman who has writhed silently under a mighty wrong.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The back somersault, the kip-up-- And at last, the stand on his hands,... Perfect, with his feet together, His head down, evenly breathing,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To fight oppression, and to work as best we can for a sane organization of society, we do not have to abandon the state of mind of... freedom. If we do that we are letting the same thuggery in by the back door that we are fighting off in front of the house.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, ...exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Vivian Rutledge: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. I like to see them work out a little first. See if they're front ...runners or come from behind. Philip Marlowe: Find out mine? Vivian Rutledge: I think so. Philip Marlowe: Go ahead. Vivian Rutledge: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the back stretch, and, then, come home free. Philip Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself. Vivian Rutledge: I haven't met anyone yet that could do it. Any suggestions? Philip Marlowe: I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how ... how far you can go. Vivian Rutledge: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »