Books, gentlemen, are a species of men, and introduced to them you circulate in the "very best society" that this world can furnis...h, without the intolerable infliction of "dressing" to go into it. In your shabbiest coat and cosiest slippers you may socially chat even with the fastidious Earl of Chesterfield, and lounging under a tree enjoy the divinest intimacy with my late lord of Verulam.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was the Walton of this stream, who had come over from Newcastle, England, with his... son,--the latter a stout and hearty man who had lifted an anchor in his day. A straight old man he was, who took his way in silence through the meadows, having passed the period of communication with his fellows; his old experienced coat, hanging long and straight and brown as the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him unexpectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he moved, fishing in some old country method,--for youth and age then went a-fishing together,--full of incommunicable thoughts, perchance about his own Tyne and Northumberland. He was always to be seen in serene afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling with the sedge; so many sunny hours in an old man's life, entrapping silly fish; almost grown to be the sun's familiar; what need had he of hat or raiment any, having served out his time, and seen through such thin disguises? I have seen how his coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and yet I thought his luck was not in proportion to his years; and I have seen when, with slow steps and weighed down with aged thoughts, he disappeared with his fish under his low-roofed house on the skirts of the village. I think nobody else saw him; nobody else remembers him now, for he soon after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fishing was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, just as the aged read their Bibles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see that every man that went in had his pockets bulging, or something muffled up under his coat--and I see it warn't no perfumer...y either, not by a long sight. I smelt sickly eggs by the barrel, and rotten cabbages, and such things; and if I know the signs of a dead cat being around, and I bet I do, there was sixty-four of them went in. I shoved in there for a minute, but it was too various for me, I couldn't stand it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it,..." they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you have wit, use it to please, and not to hurt; you may shine, like the sun in the temperature zones, without scorching. Here ...it is wished for; under the Line it is dreaded.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,--he has come un...der the bonds to adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We need to nurture uniqueness and independence.... Ours must be schools for ego- strength--the child's ego, not the teacher's. "Yo...u can do it!" has to be the teacher's consistent, over-and-over steady slogan: "You can hang up your own coat...." "You can pour your own juice...." "You can climb to the top...." "You can figure it out." We have no stake in schools where children learn to color within the lines. No stake in pushing for unnecessary conformity, no stake in children submerging themselves in the group, no stake in everlasting lessons in obediently following the directions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Added man-made failure really hurts young children [under six]. No one has to contrive lessons for these youngsters so that they w...ill learn how to lose--they are losers too much of the time. No one has to put them in their place--they know all too well in their hearts the little place they are in. No one has to cut them down to size--their size is painfully small. At this stage in their development we are wise to stay away from competition, from games and races and contests with winners and losers. It matters too much to each child to come in first--they cannot stand the risk of competition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Success matters very much to the under-six age group. These children want so desperately to be able to hold their heads high. They... sound exceedingly boastful: "I can count up to five...." "I can tie my shoes...." "I know how old I am. Do you want to see...?" Each child maintains his own public relations office. He is continuously concerned with getting his name and his skill and his knowledge and his power into the "headlines." But we mustn't be misled by this drumbeating. The bombast is as much for the child's benefit as for ours--he can't quite believe his own importance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »