In a New Century

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C. Scribner's Sons, 1908 - 377 páginas
 

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Página 179 - He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
Página 66 - There are two duties incumbent upon any man who enters on the business of writing: truth to the fact and a good spirit in the treatment. In every department of literature, though so low as hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is of importance to the education and comfort of mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the faithful trying to do so will lend some dignity to the man who tries it.
Página 60 - Sit down with pen, ink, paper, and a dictionary — if you need one. Then we all know what happens. You have got to think. There is no way out of it. Thinking is to the natural man a severe and repugnant exercise, but the natural man is not a writer. Before anybody becomes a writer he must subjugate nature to the extent of partially overcoming his distaste for consecutive thought.
Página 348 - To be sure peculation and avarice are open to him, and perhaps avarice is as good a sin as he can take up with if he must cultivate any, for a decent share of riches may help his case, a good deal and it is interesting to hoard and make heirs respectful. But it is unwise of him to be much of a sinner, because he is so much exposed to his own society and will be so much inconvenienced by having to associate with an unworthy person whom he cannot respect. He had better be good. He may be virtuous and...
Página 86 - ... of daily experiences, most of which are trivial, but the aggregate of trivial things counts for a vast deal. The familiar faces we see in the daily round and the brief exchanges of salutation and discourse that one encounters are incidents of superficial importance, but they go a long way towards making the difference between existence that is profitable and existence that is dull. To make the world a friendly place one must show it a friendly face. There is as much inequality of position, social...
Página 336 - After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burden. To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable, but even in that there are possibilities that are glorious. But to carry no load at all — there is nothing in that. No one seems to arrive at any goal really worth reaching in this world who does not come to it heavy laden.
Página 85 - There are a thousand relations in life besides dinnergiving relations that are worth while; there are a thousand phases of friendship that are worth cultivating besides the kind that flourishes between persons of equal social condition. Social condition is largely an accident. It does not touch character nor limit sympathy. In every walk of life there are the traits that invite and repay friendship. There is a common ground, if one's feet can only find it, on which all true people can stand in a...
Página 347 - A deaf man who really wants to be good has it in his favor that there are a number of sinful or inexpedient things that he cannot do to advantage. Politics is full of dangerous solicitations, but he can hardly be a leader in politics, so he is quit of most of the risks of it. He cannot play poker to good advantage, though he can buy stocks ; he cannot flirt, unless, indeed, he is a resolute adventurer and learns to read the lips ; he is so badly handicapped in general society that there is little...
Página 57 - ... least to revert to it, until it arrives somewhere ; and this it will often do whether its owner keeps his watch at the wheel or not. I think that most writers, when they have got some particularly good idea into some particularly lucid and effective form of words, often feel that the job is only partly of their doing, and that a good deal of it, and probably the very best of it, came to them by processes more or less independent of their volition. Nobody writes without putting his will into the...
Página 81 - To cultivate one person or one family more, necessitates cultivating some other persons or families less. That is inevitable. Tastes differ, and a preference for one person or one lot of people does not necessarily imply disparagement of others. Propinquity, associations, relationship, and various circumstances determine who our friends shall be, and the advantage of having desirable and profitable friends is so obvious that the most careless observer cannot fail to discern it. Indeed, suitable acquaintances...

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