The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expre...ssion--it is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for any ... noun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Without our being especially conscious of the transition, the word "parent" has gradually come to be used as much as a verb as a n...oun. Whereas we formerly thought mainly about "being a parent," we now find ourselves talking about learning how "to parent." . . . It suggests that we may now be concentrating on action rather than status, on what we do rather than what or who we are.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
OUR Latin books in motly row, Invite us to our task--... Gay Horace, stately Cicero: Yet there's one verb, when once we know, No higher skill we ask: This ranks all other lore above-- We've learned "'Amare' means 'to love'!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, n...ot as farms and houses are, for homestead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The quality of imagination is to flow, and not to freeze. The poet did not stop at the color or the form, but read their meaning, ...neither may he rest in this meaning, but he makes the same objects exponents of his new thought. Here is the difference betwixt the poet and the mystic, that the last nails a symbol to one sense, which was a true sense for a moment, but soon become old and false. For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead. Mysticism consists in the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One day the Nouns were clustered in the street. An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.... The Nouns were struck, moved, changed. The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »