Lowells Quotes & Sayings

Man cuts out for himself a manageable world: he throws himself into action uncritically, unthinkingly. He accepts the cultural programming that turns his nose where he is supposed to look; he doesn't bite the world off in one piece as a giant would, but in small manageable pieces, as a beaver does. He uses all kinds of techniques, which we call the "character defenses": he learns not to expose himself, not to stand out; he learns to embed himself in other-power, both of concrete persons and of things and cultural commands; the result is that he comes to exist in the imagined infallibility of the world around him. He doesn't have to have fears when his feet are solidly mired and his life mapped out in a ready-made maze. All he has to do is to plunge ahead in a compulsive style of drivenness in the "ways of the world. — Ernest Becker

The sun that warms is also the sun that burns. — Matshona Dhliwayo

People have alleged that I have inspired many young people over the years, but I say, it was just the opposite. — David R. Brower

I can't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe it." "Neither can I," Jessica said, eyeballing the door. "And if you'll just let me by, I'll go get some help - " "Oh," Abigail said, with another laugh, "you're perfectly safe. I'm not crazy." She held out her hand. "Abigail Moira Garrett de Piaget. Local girl from Freezing Bluff, Michigan. Nice to meet you." Jessica felt her jaw slip down to land with a figurative thud on her chest. "You're kidding." Abigail pulled her hand back and hugged herself, still laughing in a gasping kind of way. "Oh, honey, you just don't know the half of it." Jessica could hardly think straight. "You're from - " "1996. Fell into a pond and resurfaced in Miles's moat in 1248. It's a wonder he took me in with the way I smelled." "Then you're from - " "Michigan. And what I wouldn't give for a York peppermint patty about now. — Lynn Kurland

I dwell 'neath the shades of Harvard
In the State of the Sacred Cod,
Where the Lowells speak only to Cabots
And the Cabots speak only to God — Richard Clarke Cabot

A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse any portion of nature by being buried in it. — Henry David Thoreau

Mentoring is the last refuge of the older artist. With luck, disciples will keep one's books in print, one's reputation alive. — Michael Dirda

Kennedy's issue didn't seem to be that she had been in jail, but that she had put on weight in jail. The food had been crappy, she'd told me, and it has been high on the carbohydrate count.
"But I'm an emotional eater," she'd said, as if that were a terrible thing.
"And I was real emotional in jail. — Charlaine Harris

I think one of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing, and activities on the ground, that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power throughout which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways, we still suffer from that. — Barack Obama

It was against this backdrop that the great fortunes were made, fortunes which allowed the first families to dominate the society of that era. Theodore Parker, a crusading minister in the 1840s, wrote of the Lowells and these other great families: "This class is the controlling one in politics. It mainly enacts the laws of this state and the nation; makes them serve its turn ... It can manufacture governors, senators, judges to suit its purposes as easily as it can manufacture cotton cloth. This class owns the machinery of society ... ships, factories, shops, water privileges." They were also families which had a fine sense of protecting their own position, and they were notorious for giving large grants to Harvard College, which was their college, and just as notorious for doing very little for public education. — David Halberstam

Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear. — Ben Bernanke

The fence was probably there to keep people from getting onto the highway and doing stupid things - like sledding into the fast lane on snack trays - but — Rick Riordan