There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a... special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If all be true that I do think, There are five reasons we should drink:... Good wine, a friend, or being dry, Or lest we should be by and by, Or any other reason why.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally ...apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go, throng each other's drawing-rooms, Ye idols of a petty clique:... Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes, And make your penny-trumpets squeak: Deck your dull talk with pilfered shreds Of learning from a noble time, And oil each other's little heads With mutual Flattery's golden slime.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
From the true antagonist illimitable courage is transmitted to you. To what indifference people may come, to what profound co...nviction of having lost the right track forever.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living ...heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Grandpa: Penny, why don't you write a play about ism-mania? Penny: Ism-mania?... Grandpa: Yeah, sure. You know, communism, fascism, voodooism. Everybody's got an ism these days. Penny: It sounds like an itch or something. Grandpa: It's just as catching. When things go a little bad these days, you go out and get yourself an ism and you're in business.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »