All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty..., an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why th...e writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as be...tween a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If it is no exaggeration to say that Deerfield is not so much a town as the ghost of a town, its dimness almost transparent, its q...uiet almost a cessation, it is essential to add that it is probably quite the most beautiful ghost of its kind, and with the deepest poetic and historic significance to be found in America.... It is, and will probably always remain, the perfect and beautiful statement of the tragic and creative moment when one civilization is destroyed by another. And the wonderful ghostliness of this mile-long 'Street' of grave and ancient houses, the strange air of unreality which hangs over it, arises precisely from the fact that the little town is really saying two things at once. It is saying, 'I dared to be beautiful, even in the shadow of the wilderness'; but it is also saying, 'And the wilderness haunts me, the ghosts of a slain race are in my doorways and clapboards, like a kind of death.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the aut...horitative statement of the reviewer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The honor my country shall never be stained by an apology from me for the statement of truth and the performance of duty; nor can ...I give any explanation of my official acts except such as is due to integrity and justice and consistent with the principles on which our institutions have been framed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss... But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One is apt to be discouraged by the frequency with which Mr. Hardy has persuaded himself that a macabre subject is a poem in itsel...f; that, if there be enough of death and the tomb in one's theme, it needs no translation into art, the bold statement of it being sufficient.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »