The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom... explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every man who has lived for fifty years has buried a whole world or even two; he has grown used to its disappearance and accustome...d to the new scenery of another act: but suddenly the names and faces of a time long dead appear more and more often on his way, calling up series of shades and pictures kept somewhere, "just in case" in the endless catacombs of the memory, making him smile or sigh, and sometimes almost weep.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You know that the nucleus of a time is not The poet but the poem, the growth of the mind... Of the world, the heroic effort to live expressed As victory. The poet does not speak in ruins Nor stand there making orotund consolations. He shares the confusions of intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was a heavy burden on the conscience to know that while you sat in Music 101, some contemporary--as "worthy" of a college educa...tion as you were, but one who had been denied the opportunity because he was poor, or black, or both--was getting his head blown off in Vietnam. Many students believed that such inequity was wrong, but couldn't bring themselves to redress it personally by refusing the student deferment. It's a dreadful combination: to act for self-protection yet at the same time to loathe oneself for acting that way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you ...can fool all of the people all of the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the hu...man currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There will be a new church founded on moral science, at first cold and naked, a babe in a manger again, the algebra and mathematic...s of ethical law, the church of men to come, without shams, or psaltery, or sackbut; but it will have heaven and earth for its beams and rafters; science for symbol and illustration; it will fast enough gather beauty, music, picture, poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and exigent as this shall be. It shall send man home to his central solitude, shame these social, supplicating manners, and make him know that much of the time he must have himself to his friend. He shall expect no cooperation, he shall walk with no companion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is not precious, a thing to be cherished. The soul and the mind are the instruments God gives us for our use and half of us d...on't begin to use them. We put Life and Health on two little pedestals and spend most of our time performing acts of devotion before them. Instead of using them as a carpenter his tools, as a helmsman the rudder, to hammer or steer our way to victory, we turn ourselves into Vestal Virgins with nothing on the face of the earth to do but to feed the feeble flames of our comfort. Life is no craven thing, lurking coward-like in a corner. It is big, broad, splendid in opportunity. It is to be used, not cherished. It is to be spent, not saved.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »