We (the indivisible divinity that works in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquito...us in space and firm in time, but we have allowed slight, and eternal, bits of the irrational to form part of its architecture so as to know that it is false.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth and growth, which we valu...e, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itself is so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it is bountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste that will one day include our own cheap lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today the two cities seem to stand in contrast to each another. Florence has become a bustling and vital modern city. Whilst it ma...y no longer nurture Michelangelos and Botticellis, there are native Florentine painters of international renown. Its ancient craft of leatherwork plays a distinctive role in contemporary fashion, and Florentines have effectively revived the old skills with stuffs and dyes and organized their distribution on a scale which dwarfs the network of the once ubiquitous Medici banks. Venice instead is apparently a city belonging only to her past, an empty shell of former glories. Its native population diminishes constantly, deserting the island for the industrial wasteland that threatens to destroy what is left of millennial grandeur. Its last remaining industry makes baubles for the tourists who come in droves to stay on a statistical average of eighteen hours, to mill about and to gawk at the remaining relics of the Seremissima's magnificence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Insurrection:... insurrection as soon as circumstances allow: insurrection, strenuous, ubiquitous: the insurrection of the masses:... the holy war of the oppressed: the republic to make republicans: the people in action to initiate progress. Let the insurrection announce with its awful voice the decrees of God: let it clear and level the ground on which its own immortal structure shall be raised. Let it, like the Nile, flood all the country that it is destined to make fertile.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ubiquitous and acutely conscious presence of our adolescents is a major problem, especially since much of their consciousness ...seems to be focused on sexuality--ours and theirs. They expect us to ignore them if they are kissing their dates in the family room; but let us so much as wink at one another, and they whistle loudly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am aghast to find myself in such a position of power over two other people. Their father and I have them in thrall simply by hav...ing produced them. We have the power to make them feel good or bad about themselves, which is the greatest power in the world. Ours will not be the only influence, but it is the earliest, the most ubiquitous, and potentially the most pernicious. Lovers and friends will make them blossom and bleed, but they may move on to other lovers and friends. We are the only parents they will have.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Anyone can see that to write Uncle Tom's Cabin on the knee in the kitchen, with constant calls to cooking and other details of hou...sework to punctuate the paragraphs, was a more difficult achievement than to write it at leisure in a quiet room.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »