I will prove to you that my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all that is dearest to me. All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will flout. I am no longer afraid of life.
With all of the tensions of cold and hot wars working towards a rather specious "unity of purpose," political non-conformity seems to have all but disappeared.
We invent our god to exculpate us when we find it necessary to perform the unpleasant act of killing those who invent their god when they find it necessary to perform the unpleasant task of killing us.
Even the owner of the smallest enterprise acts with alacrity. The shoeshine boy flips his polishing rag with alacrity, the bartender serves a beer with alacrity, sliding it up to you along the polished surface of the bar.
Parturient silences and clean landscapes offer a promise of fresh beginnings, and if certain hopes lie dormant it's only because they're gathering strength.
Superficially he's a phlegmatic type, slouching round in old clothes, staring vacantly at the stars or at nothing at all, sitting in the center of a circle of students and scratching his head and grinning.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. ... Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?
The symbol that stands out too sharply from its matrix may distract the reader's eye from the fictional dream with the unpleasant effect of making the writer seem frigid and his story disingenuous.
There is a hell; but its climate has undergone such a change in the last one hundred years that it may be called salubrious. In fact, it has been so modified in every respect that it is difficult to say what it is.
The body grew quiescent, receptive—a chrysalis, not dead, but reviving, curling into a further acceptance of the same process, the same physical position.
The antipathy to "style" is always an antipathy to a given style. There are no style-less works of art, only works of art belonging to different, more or less complex stylistic traditions and conventions.
I could not believe that she really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her. What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it.
The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in life: it is getting above himself, which is impossible.
Founded on universal and immutable principles, the church can never grow old or obsolete, but is the church for all times and places, for all ranks and conditions of men.
Why should we prevaricate, just at the last? We never prevaricated before. I have got to die some time, and it's better to die when one is sick than when one is well.
We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions—a practice now relegated to the aberrant and uneducated—was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming.
So it is with the love of money, the love of power and the other maladies that affect the minds of men — you may be sure that it is when they abate and give every appearance of being cured that they are at their most dangerous.
In our times, the increasing complexity of our civilization would seem to preclude any serious thought of recapturing the harmony possible only in an age of grace and simplicity.
The time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.
In an ideal state of society one might imagine the good New growing naturally out of the good Old, without the need for polemic and theory; this would be a society with a living tradition.
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely.
The worthless and profligate meet the public eye in our streets, on the wharves, and, occasionally, stretched in a state of intoxication on the pavements.
In the dynamic aspect of the revolution the man of action should be a vanguard for the intellectual, and in the sphere of art, thought, and scientific investigation, the intellectual should be a vanguard for the man of action.
I want to do only what I have it in my heart to do, and let others do the same; I do not ask anything of anybody; I do not want to curtail anybody's freedom. I want to be free myself.
There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings.
Every creative writer, even the most immature, knows the sensation of a conscious mind in abeyance while the hand goes writing, writing at the dictation of some inner force.
A hundred races, from the mightiest to the weakest... you took from each of them a shade, a hue, a tint, and a scintilla, enfolding them to your bosom, adding them to the splendor of your attire, and continuing your course through the ages with vigor and resolve.
As we find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed races becomes effete.
From the suns and stars that plunge forever through sidereal space to the electrons that whirl like mad dervishes within the atom, every particle of living matter is in movement.
Frank Crane, George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements
He ends by making machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the every day sharer of his meals, books, bath towels, pocketbook, relatives, ambitions, secrets, malaises and business: a proceeding about as romantic as having his boots blacked.
To get out, to go abroad, to breathe in the fresh air, in any shape, is a boon—a great boon; especially to me, eligible as I am to all the delights of freedom and vigor!
Many vitiate their principles in the acquisition of riches; and who can wonder that what is gained by fraud and extortion is enjoyed with tyranny and excess?
The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness.
Comments by kingparton
kingparton commented on the word flout
I will prove to you that my love has grown, that it is greater to me than my class and all that is dearest to me. All that is dearest to the bourgeoisie I will flout. I am no longer afraid of life.
Jack London, Martin Eden
January 2, 2012
kingparton commented on the word perennial
Perennial youth, perennial brightness, follow them both. Who can imagine the old age of the sun?
Washington Allston, "Human Art and Infinite Truth"
January 2, 2012
kingparton commented on the word specious
With all of the tensions of cold and hot wars working towards a rather specious "unity of purpose," political non-conformity seems to have all but disappeared.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
January 2, 2012
kingparton commented on the word penury
The fear of penury is very curious, in our age. In really poor ages men did not fear penury. They didn't care.
David Herbert Lawrence, "Education of the People"
December 29, 2011
kingparton commented on the word exculpate
We invent our god to exculpate us when we find it necessary to perform the unpleasant act of killing those who invent their god when they find it necessary to perform the unpleasant task of killing us.
Stefan Themerson, Tom Harris
December 29, 2011
kingparton commented on the word alacrity
Even the owner of the smallest enterprise acts with alacrity. The shoeshine boy flips his polishing rag with alacrity, the bartender serves a beer with alacrity, sliding it up to you along the polished surface of the bar.
Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography
December 29, 2011
kingparton commented on the word refractory
Prose is by nature unstable and self-interfering; it is refractory and uncontainable. Prose does not so much flow as overflow.
Viktor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose
December 14, 2011
kingparton commented on the word ebullient
I came back, as I wrote you, feeling utterly exhausted. The feeling is wearing away, but I am far from being ebullient.
Anaïs Nin, A Literate Passion
December 14, 2011
kingparton commented on the word parturient
Parturient silences and clean landscapes offer a promise of fresh beginnings, and if certain hopes lie dormant it's only because they're gathering strength.
Peter M. Leschak, Seeing the Raven
December 14, 2011
kingparton commented on the word phlegmatic
Superficially he's a phlegmatic type, slouching round in old clothes, staring vacantly at the stars or at nothing at all, sitting in the center of a circle of students and scratching his head and grinning.
Oscar James Campbell, Patterns for Living
December 14, 2011
kingparton commented on the word burgeon
Talk like that is the rain that should make buried love for one's country burgeon.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross
December 14, 2011
kingparton commented on the word precipitate
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. ... Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?
Martin Luther King, "Letter From Birmingham Jail"
November 29, 2011
kingparton commented on the word facetious
In any case, in the hands of a facetious medical student a corpse can be made to laugh by manipulating the orbicular of the lips.
Georges Bataille, The Tears of Eros
November 29, 2011
kingparton commented on the word exigency
She asserts female right to a profession not because of financial exigency or family crisis, but out of sheer desire and for the sake of sheer power.
Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, "Anomalous Ownership"
November 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word disingenuous
The symbol that stands out too sharply from its matrix may distract the reader's eye from the fictional dream with the unpleasant effect of making the writer seem frigid and his story disingenuous.
John Garnder, Notes on the Fictional Process
November 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word salubrious
There is a hell; but its climate has undergone such a change in the last one hundred years that it may be called salubrious. In fact, it has been so modified in every respect that it is difficult to say what it is.
Ambrose Bierce, "The Follies of Religion"
November 23, 2011
kingparton commented on the word empirical
Knowledge by revelation is more like empirical than rational knowledge.
C.S. Lewis, "Bulverism"
November 23, 2011
kingparton commented on the word inchoate
It took everything to stay afloat in the mysterious sea of the classroom, everything not to sink into my own inchoate self.
Maureen Noelle McLane, "The Secret History of Rock-n-Roll"
November 23, 2011
kingparton commented on the word soporific
The first pages, of most of these old papers, are as soporific as a bed of poppies.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Tales and Sketches
November 23, 2011
kingparton commented on the word quiescent
The body grew quiescent, receptive—a chrysalis, not dead, but reviving, curling into a further acceptance of the same process, the same physical position.
Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher, Sister Age
November 23, 2011
kingparton commented on the word anomalous
An anomalous state of things may justify individuals; perhaps a generation: but an anomaly can never become a general law for permanent action.
Wilfrid Philip Ward, Problems and Persons
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word truculent
A strong, astringent, bilious nature has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that fret my leaves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word attenuate
He saw plainly that he was doomed to grow ever feebler and that each day that passed would attenuate his hold on life.
Donald Keene, The Diaries of Masaoka Shiki
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word capricious
You're as capricious today as a young woman who needs to get married and has no suitor.
Maxim Gorky, "Recollections of Leo Tolstoy"
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word torpor
I had put out the light, and a torpor had come over me that was more like an anesthetic than sleep.
Gustavo Corção, Who If I Cry Out
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word antipathy
The antipathy to "style" is always an antipathy to a given style. There are no style-less works of art, only works of art belonging to different, more or less complex stylistic traditions and conventions.
Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation"
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word partisan
I wrote as an enthusiast and a partisan—and with, it now seems to me, a certain naiveté.
Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays
November 19, 2011
kingparton commented on the word prohibitive
I could not believe that she really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her. What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it.
Henry James, The Aspern Papers
November 15, 2011
kingparton commented on the word complaisant
The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See already the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The American Scholar"
November 15, 2011
kingparton commented on the word pedantic
There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. No man can get above his pursuit in life: it is getting above himself, which is impossible.
William Hazlitt, "On the Conversation of Authors"
November 15, 2011
kingparton commented on the word veracious
For man has ever been a striving, struggling, and, in spite of wide-spread calumnies to the contrary, a veracious creature.
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present
November 13, 2011
kingparton commented on the word immutable
Founded on universal and immutable principles, the church can never grow old or obsolete, but is the church for all times and places, for all ranks and conditions of men.
Orestes A. Brownson, The American Republic
November 13, 2011
kingparton commented on the word prevaricate
Why should we prevaricate, just at the last? We never prevaricated before. I have got to die some time, and it's better to die when one is sick than when one is well.
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
November 13, 2011
kingparton commented on the word abstemious
He was upright, singularly abstemious, studious; but he was poor, he was the son of a small farmer, and she was of the gentry.
Lucia Gilbert Runkle, "Abigail Adams"
November 12, 2011
kingparton commented on the word abscond
Clerks abscond, partners cut their throats, balance sheets won't add up, accounts are cooked.
Bessie Raynor Parks, "The Land of Gossip"
November 12, 2011
kingparton commented on the word aberrant
We have nothing but dreams, and we have forgotten that seeing visions—a practice now relegated to the aberrant and uneducated—was once a more significant, interesting, and disciplined kind of dreaming.
T.S. Eliot, "Dante"
November 12, 2011
kingparton commented on the word abate
So it is with the love of money, the love of power and the other maladies that affect the minds of men — you may be sure that it is when they abate and give every appearance of being cured that they are at their most dangerous.
Seneca, "On Noise"
October 30, 2011
kingparton commented on the word preclude
In our times, the increasing complexity of our civilization would seem to preclude any serious thought of recapturing the harmony possible only in an age of grace and simplicity.
José Enrique Rodó, Ariel
October 30, 2011
kingparton commented on the word funereal
The time of towns is tolled from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants, and by growth of joy on joy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet"
August 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word polemic
In an ideal state of society one might imagine the good New growing naturally out of the good Old, without the need for polemic and theory; this would be a society with a living tradition.
T. S. Eliot, "Reflections on Vers Libre"
August 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word husbandry
Ancient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
August 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word modicum
I have my health, a choice of books, needlework and good weather—with only a modicum of good sense, one should go a long way like that.
Frances Mossiker, Madame de Sévigné
August 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word profligate
The worthless and profligate meet the public eye in our streets, on the wharves, and, occasionally, stretched in a state of intoxication on the pavements.
Mathew Carey, "Public Charities of Philadelphia"
August 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word doff
I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde.
Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
July 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word disquietude
In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his refined face showed a vague disquietude.
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders
July 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word vanguard
In the dynamic aspect of the revolution the man of action should be a vanguard for the intellectual, and in the sphere of art, thought, and scientific investigation, the intellectual should be a vanguard for the man of action.
Jean Franco, "Critical Passions"
July 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word credulity
Only allow me to give you a word of advice: keep your credulity out of your pockets! Don't pay for the picture till it's delivered.
Henry James, "The Madonna of the Future"
July 28, 2011
kingparton commented on the word curtail
I want to do only what I have it in my heart to do, and let others do the same; I do not ask anything of anybody; I do not want to curtail anybody's freedom. I want to be free myself.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, "What Is to Be Done?"
July 27, 2011
kingparton commented on the word explicate
We can never wholly explicate a poem any more than we can explicate ourselves, or another person—but we can try to come close.
Donald Hall, "To Read Poetry"
July 27, 2011
kingparton commented on the word inimical
The birds are as loquacious as women: the bees as inimical to silence as children.
Robert Lynd, "Silence"
July 27, 2011
kingparton commented on the word fetid
There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
July 27, 2011
kingparton commented on the word abeyance
Every creative writer, even the most immature, knows the sensation of a conscious mind in abeyance while the hand goes writing, writing at the dictation of some inner force.
Burges Johnson, Essaying the Essay
July 26, 2011
kingparton commented on the word prepossessing
Having her father's figure and features, the girl was anything but prepossessing.
Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky
July 26, 2011
kingparton commented on the word sumptuous
He is the slave of the dream of life... He has listened to the vagaries of the prophets, who have given to him the sumptuous bubble of Paradise.
Jack London, John Barleycorn
July 26, 2011
kingparton commented on the word factious
To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age; but always of eminence.
James Boswell, Life of Johnson
July 26, 2011
kingparton commented on the word resplendent
The sea and fields were still, as the setting sun vied with the resplendent red garments of our ladies for favor in the eyes of all.
Iharu Saikuku, Five Women Who Loved Love
July 26, 2011
kingparton commented on the word evanescent
She rubbed and curtsied, caressing the planks, making evanescent designs of herself against the darkness of the water.
Anne Bosworth Greene, "Lambs of March"
July 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word scintilla
A hundred races, from the mightiest to the weakest... you took from each of them a shade, a hue, a tint, and a scintilla, enfolding them to your bosom, adding them to the splendor of your attire, and continuing your course through the ages with vigor and resolve.
Arshak Chopanian, "Ode to My Native Tongue"
July 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word effete
As we find stumps of vast trees in our exhausted soils, and have received traditions of their ancient fertility to tillage, so history reckons epochs in which the intellect of famed races becomes effete.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, English Traits
July 25, 2011
kingparton commented on the word transient
He had a piano, a few books: picked up transient acquaintances of a day, week, or month in the stream of travellers from all Europe.
Joseph Conrad, "Il Conde"
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word sidereal
From the suns and stars that plunge forever through sidereal space to the electrons that whirl like mad dervishes within the atom, every particle of living matter is in movement.
Frank Crane, George Westinghouse: His Life and Achievements
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word miasma
Labor hides itself in every mode and form... it keeps the cow out of the garden, the rain out of the library, the miasma out of the town.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Perpetual Forces"
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word Machiavellian
He ends by making machiavellian efforts to avoid kissing the every day sharer of his meals, books, bath towels, pocketbook, relatives, ambitions, secrets, malaises and business: a proceeding about as romantic as having his boots blacked.
H. L. Mencken, In Defense of Women
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word boon
To get out, to go abroad, to breathe in the fresh air, in any shape, is a boon—a great boon; especially to me, eligible as I am to all the delights of freedom and vigor!
Horace Traubet, With Walt Whitman in Camden
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word vitiate
Many vitiate their principles in the acquisition of riches; and who can wonder that what is gained by fraud and extortion is enjoyed with tyranny and excess?
Samuel Johnson, "The Rambler (No. CLXXII)"
July 24, 2011
kingparton commented on the word conversant
The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness.
Henry David Thoreau, "Walking"
July 24, 2011