Literary Critics

"Together we must strengthen the ethical sense among peoples, work so that we can enrich ourselves from our differences."

"Together we must reject any attempt to establish a hierarchy between cultures, any amalgamation between terrorism and a given culture, religion or ideology. We must instead contribute to promoting rationality."

"deserves credit for his courageous advocacy of the of Ohio, probably more than for his contributions to literature: his trade monthly, published from 1854 t0 1861, Cozzens' Wine Press, is a neglected classic which provides a charming insight into the amenities of the table in a society which devoted considerable care to that department."

"Together, we must strengthen the spirit of ethics among nations and work to ensure that our differences become a source of mutual enrichment."

"Later practitioners improved upon Mitchell and Stoughton only by extending the list of sins, by going into greater detail. Year by year the stock enumeration grew, and once a new sin was added to the series it kept its place in subsequent editions."

"American capitalism of 1830 to 1860 was a riot of extravagance. Hundreds of those who glistened in New York and Boston in the 1840's are forgotten. A few families—, —managed to maintain continuity, but they were few. The number who went down to ruin invited a chronicler equal to Dickens."

"Perry Miller died fifty years ago today at age fifty-eight. After his death, letters of appreciation from friends and former students flooded the desk where Elizabeth Miller was working to complete her husband’s The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War. In their letters, students expressed gratitude, friends offered Elizabeth their support, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. confessed that Miller’s death, coming on the heels of , had left him in a deep depression. “Perry, as you well know,” wrote Schlesinger, “was one of the first influences in my life.” “He was a superb teacher,” Schlesinger recalled. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a frequent correspondent of Miller’s and a careful reader of all Miller’s books, published an obituary for his friend in the '."

"By the middle of the twentieth century, the world had accepted Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, published in 1851, as an indubitable masterpiece of the nineteenth, even though that world became aware of it only a generation ago."

"Within the framework of a renewed, modernized UNESCO, eager to act more than before, within which it is high time that absent countries find their place, we must, together, ensure that the Organization can initiate the process necessary to fully play its role, asserting itself more intensely as an intellectual Organization, a Forum for reflection."

"Give me the boon of Love! I ask no more for Fame; Far better one unpurchased heart Than Glory's proudest name. Why wake a fever in the blood, Or damp the spirit now, To gain a wreath whose leaves shall wave Above a withered brow?"

"Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters."

"There is a policy in manner. I have heard one, not inexperienced in the pursuit of fame, give it his earnest support, as being the surest passport to absolute and brilliant success."

"The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth."

"There are no greater forgers in the universe, than cunning mannerists. Their whole lives are false. The loveliest of human attributes, the beautiful, the winning virtue of sincerity, abides not with them. They have abjured the profession of humanity."

"There is to the poetical sense a ravishing prophecy and winsome intimation in flowers that now and then, from the influence of mood of circumstance, reasserts itself like the reminiscence of childhood, or the spell of love."

"A popular epithet usually goes nearer the truth than we are apt to imagine."

"When the fluid particles composing the primeval earth settled into consistent masses, an unbroken, uniform plain was not the result; but everywhere, form, color, and density indicated the various species of matter. Verdure crept over the rich loam, long tables of sand marked the limits of the sea, and rocks of every hue stood forth from the hills. Form of aspect and movement became a law of creation. Even the unstable elements obeyed it."

"We discern beyond the smile and the honeyed word, and are sickened at the self-created hollowness of a human heart."

"It has been often remarked that earnest men excel in humor, and we perceive how benign is the law which thus tempers elements of fearful intensity."

"Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact."

"I often muse upon the life of the true artist until it redeems to my mind, the more prosaic aspects of human existence."

"One reason why the most famous portraits of the old masters, ... are so life-like, and inspire so deep a sense of their authenticity, is doubtless that the originals were objects of affection, and familiar by constant association and sympathy, to the minds of the artists."

"It is to be regretted we are so limited in costume. No word is more prevalent than becoming, and no idea more commonly violated. As regards the dress of our own sex, I do not remember to have met a single exception to the feeling of its almost entire deficiency, both in elegance and adaptation."

"Let us recognise the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment."

"There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars."

"There they breathe a congenial atmosphere. Often subsisting upon the merest pittance, indulging in every vagary of costume, they wander over the land and yield themselves freely to the spirit of adventure and the luxury of art."

"Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor."

"It has been said that self-respect is the gate of heaven, and the most cursory observation shows that a degree of reserve adds vastly to the latent force of character."

"A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created."

"Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge, and brings the figures on the tablet of memory into strong relief."

"Our times might not inaptly be designated as the age of traveling. Its records form no insignificant branch of the literature of the day."

"If the perspective of time were not a necessary condition of romance, the present age would be deemed as fertile in the wonderful as any which have preceded it; but this obvious truth, though sometimes acknowledged, is seldom realized."

"Tact is an essential principle of conversation; hence, the eastern metaphor which likens a word spoken in season, to "apples of gold in pictures of silver." The time and the society must regulate the subject."

"Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency."

"This miserable habit of our times is vividly illustrated by the manner in which those next most sacred things to mortals, books, are treated."

"Society is too often at war with love. Thousands of human spirits created to assimilate, to afford mutual comfort and inspiration, to interpret each other, and find in sympathy a balm and motive that will render them superior to vicissitude; thousands of human spirits cross and recross each other's paths, severed by the barriers of vain custom and arbitrary opinion."

"To a nice ear, the quality of a voice is singularly affecting. Its depth seems to be allied to feeling; at least, the contralto notes alone give an adequate sense of pathos. They are born near the heart."

"The art of walking is at once suggestive of the dignity of man. Progressive motion alone implies power, but in almost every other instance it seems a power gained at the expense of self-possession."

"If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words."

"There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an undefinable and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. It may be that this feeling springs from a sense of unattained good, of a perfection of being quite at variance with the present, which the beautiful never fails to suggest."

"It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament."

"There is a strength of quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess."

"A pilgrimage is an admirable remedy for over-fastidiousness and sickly refinement."

"Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest."

"For Truth makes holy Love's illusive dreams, And their best promise constantly redeems."

"Humor is doubtless intended as the safety-valve of concentrative minds, and its prevalence, in the English race, is owing to their reserve of character, which finds no vent through a mercurial temperament like the French and Italians."

"In my head, I lived on the plantation, and then I lived through the Civil War, and then I lived in Reconstruction and then I lived in the Jim Crow South, " she said. "It was always very personal, and I think that's something that's an added complexity. I was these women, but on the flip side, they were me. I really felt them as ancestors, not just characters I made up."

"My childhood had a great influence in making me very determined to be independent and listen to my own voice. And that really put me in very good stead when I started my corporate career. I had built up my career, and I had climbed the corporate ladder. After a couple of decades, I had worked myself up to being a Vice President and General Manager of a Fortune 500 Company in Silicon Valley."

"An author's life is very solitary and that part is sometimes difficult," she said. "I think about how stimulating it was to have so many smart people around (at Sun Microsystems), but I enjoy this."

"I literally woke up one morning and said 'I am going to write a book.' I didn't write it from chapter one. I just tried to get to know who these women [my ancestors] were. I wrote in their voices for a couple of months. I would write it as a diary, and then I would put two of them in the room together and see how they interacted with one another. And then I put three in a room together until I began to really feel that I had a handle on who they were and how they would react. And what happened was a novel."