In a New CenturyC. Scribner's Sons, 1908 - 377 páginas |
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Términos y frases comunes
advantage Ameri American aspirations athletics bad company better Buxton cerned chance character Christmas stocking cities comes compunctions constrained convictions course deaf deal devo disparity of means duties EDWARD SANDFORD effort energy favour feel folks fortunes getting girls habit hard Hazelton Henry James honesty human income interesting keep kind less live marriage marry Massachusetts ment mind moral nature ness never newspapers one's parents perhaps persons pleasure politics practice pretty proclivities profes profitable Protestantism readers reason rich Roman Catholic Church seashore seems shore social social capital society sort spected speculation sport stocks struggle success suffragettes suffragists summer sure talk taste things thought tion uncon vote wholesome woman suffrage women worth writing yachts York young
Pasajes populares
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 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 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 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 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 336 - ... achieving. A recent writer has finely said : "After all, the saddest thing that can happen to a man is to carry no burdens. 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 59 - ... he is a good enough writer. It is an advantage to him to have learning, provided he has it under good control and doesn't let it run away with him or dam him up. But the thing he must have is ideas. It is hard sledding for a writer to get along without ideas. Somehow, if he is going to be a writer, he must have bubbles in his mind. He can borrow a great many thoughts if he knows where to find them. What is learning but the assimilation of other men's ideas ! But while some persons are writers...
Página 55 - It has a different tone in every writer, just as the living voice and enunciation is different in each person, and no two painters paint alike. Style regards words as sounds, and puts them together so that they sound well. To reconcile them to grammar is not difficult. To observe how alliterations and assonances enter into style is analytically interesting, but of no practical value in writing. The ear attends to those details. It is wonderful what subtleties of tone, of feeling, of sentiment, of...
Página 60 - ... ways. You must have some kind of an idea to string them on if you are going to make a tolerable literary job. 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 347 - ... 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...