History as literature and other essays

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Scribner, 1913 - American essays - 310 pages

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Page 161 - I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men ; but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development, or social capacity.
Page 161 - This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
Page 161 - They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all, constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
Page 144 - ... spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Page 143 - It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood...
Page 303 - It is vitally necessary to move forward and to shake off the dead hand, often the fossilized dead hand, of the reactionaries; and yet we have to face the fact that there is apt to be a lunatic fringe among the votaries of any forward movement. In this recent art exhibition the lunatic fringe was fully in evidence, especially in the rooms devoted to the Cubists and the Futurists, or Near-Impressionists.
Page 147 - But the average man must earn his own livelihood. He should be trained to do so, and he should be trained to feel that he occupies a contemptible position if he does not do so...
Page 144 - The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood ; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again...
Page 77 - It is but a thing of yesterday. During the thousand years which went before the opening of this era of European supremacy, the attitude of Asia and Africa, of Hun and Mongol, Turk and Tartar, Arab and Moor, had on the whole been that of successful aggression against Europe. More than a century went by after the voyages of Columbus before the mastery in war began to pass from the Asiatic to the European. During that time Europe produced no generals or conquerors able to stand comparison with Selim...
Page 131 - Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it ! And woe, thrice over, to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise ! That was it — the fighting edge.

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