There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense. An anthrop...omorphous ape, if he could take a dispassionate view of his own case, would admit that though he could form an artful plan to plunder a garden--though he could use stones for fighting or for breaking open nuts, yet that the thought of fashioning a stone into a tool was quite beyond his scope. Still less, as he would admit, could he follow out a train of metaphysical reasoning, or solve a mathematical problem, or reflect on God, or admire a grand natural scene. Some apes, however, would probably declare that they could and did admire the beauty of the coloured skin and fur of their partners in marriage. They would admit, that though they could make other apes understand by cries some of their perceptions and simpler wants, the notion of expressing definite ideas by definite sounds had never crossed their minds. They might insist that they were ready to aid their fellow-apes of the same troop in many ways, to risk their lives for them, and to take charge of their orphans; but they would be forced to acknowledge that disinterested love for all living creatures, the most noble attribute of man, was quite beyond their comprehension. Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, is one of degree and not of kind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the whole, "organic" illnesses of the body are viewed as a misfortune over which the victim has little control. Not so for "men...tal" illnesses. These diseases of the mind become diseases of the "self." We (our "selves") can distance ourselves from our "bodily" illnesses: "my leg is broken" or "my heart is failing." But, because of mind-body dualism, our mind is our self. "My mind is sick" is not differentiated psychologically from "I am sick." We cannot distance ourselves, take a detached view of our minds: we are our minds. When a disease affects brain function, the afflicted person and those around him feel that the "self" must be somehow in control of the disorder of "self."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Under the influence of fear, which always leads men to take a pessimistic view of things, they magnified their enemies' resources,... and minimized their own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it--or, bette...r still, feel a healthy indifference to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a ...cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The newspapers, especially those in the East, are amazingly superficial and ... a large number of news gatherers are either cynics... at heart or are following the orders and the policies of the owners of their papers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is literary tradition? What is a classic? What is a canonical view of tradition? How are canons of accepted classics formed, ...and how are they unformed? I think that all these quite traditional questions can take one simplistic but still dialectical question as their summing up: do we choose tradition or does it choose us, and why is it necessary that a choosing take place, or a being chosen? What happens if one tries to write, or to teach, or to think, or even to read without the sense of a tradition? Why, nothing at all happens, just nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was... at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but th...eir very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What do the botanists know? Our lives should go between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the hand, but not for the min...d. We are still being born, and have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon, and stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »