You seem to think that I am adapted to nothing but the sugar-plums of intellect and had better not try to digest anything stronger....... a writer of popular sketches in magazines; a lecturer before Lyceums and College societies; a dabbler in metaphysics, poetry, and art, than which I would rather die, for if it has come to that, alas! verily, as you say, mediocrity has fallen on the name of Adams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflectin...g on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The family is constantly changing, as each member changes. Some changes we recognize as developments, and the pleasure they bring ...usually makes us more adaptable. Some changes threaten, or disappoint other members, who may try to resist the change, or punish someone for changing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love, by reason of its passion, destroys the in-between which relates us to and separates us from others. As long as its spell las...ts, the only in-between which can insert itself between two lovers is the child, love's own product. The child, this in-between to which the lovers now are related and which they hold in common, is representative of the world in that it also separates them; it is an indication that they will insert a new world into the existing world. Through the child, it is as though the lovers return to the world from which their love had expelled them. But this new worldliness, the possible result and the only possibly happy ending of a love affair, is, in a sense, the end of love, which must either overcome the partners anew or be transformed into another mode of belonging together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or ...mischief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families--sometimes into no family at all. When y...ou're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are seeing an increasing level of attacks on the "selfishness" of women. There are allegations that all kinds of social ills, f...rom runaway children to the neglected elderly, are due to the fact that women have left their "rightful" place in the home. Such arguments are simplistic and wrongheaded but women are especially vulnerable to the accusation that if society has problems, it's because women aren't nurturing enough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »