Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhym...e, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Alike in so many ways, united by so many indestructible bonds, the two brothers were still different men. John Kennedy remained, a...s Paul Dever had said, the Brahmin; Robert, the Puritan. In English terms one was a Whig, the other, a Radical. John Kennedy was urbane, objective, analytical, controlled, contained, masterful, a man of perspective; Robert, while very bright and increasingly reflective, was more open, exposed, emotional, subjective, intense, a man of commitment. One was a man for whom everything seemed easy; the other a man for whom everything had been difficult. One was always graceful, the other often graceless. Meeting Robert for the first time in 1963, Roy Jenkins of England thought him "staccato, inarticulate ... much less rounded, much less widely informed, much less at ease with the world of power than his brother." John Kennedy, while taking part in things, seemed, as Tom Wicker observed, almost to watch himself take part and to criticize his own performance; Robert "lost himself in the event."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas.... But ...they have no slow, big ideas. And the fewer consoling, noble, shining, free, jovial, magnanimous ideas that come, the more nervously and desperately they rush and run from office to office and up and downstairs, thinking by action at last to make life have some warmth and meaning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The foremost logical prerequisite of a rigid classification is that a mental item belong to no more than one category. Such either.../or logic presupposes a digital mode of thinking, which, unlike its analog counterpart, does not tolerate any "gray" shadings among mental fields. "Digital thinking" has a staccato character somewhat evocative of the on/off nature of the conventional light switch or the convulsive progression of time on digital clocks, in marked contradistinction to the smooth, legato style of the dimmer or the traditional analog clock.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »