The Philosopher Says--i Am, And The Church

Charles Sumner's Mind Had Reached The Calm Of Water Which Receives And Reflects Images Without Absorbing Them; It Contains Nothing But Itself.

As For America, It Is The Ideal Fruit Of All Your Youthful Hopes And Reforms. Everybody Is Fairly Decent, Respectable, Domestic, Bourgeois, Middle-class, And Tiresome. There Is Absolutely Nothing To Revile Except That It's A Bore.

You Say That Love Is Nonsense. I Tell You It Is No Such Thing. For Weeks And Months It Is A Steady Physical Pain, An Ache About The Heart, Never Leaving One, By Night Or By Day; A Long Strain On One's Nerves Like Toothache Or Rheumatism, Not Intolerable At Any One Instant, But Exhausting By Its Steady Drain On The Strength.

After Gibbs, One The Most Distinguished [american Scientists] Was Langley, Of The Smithsonian. ... He Had The Physicist's Heinous Fault Of Professing To Know Nothing Between Flashes Of Intense Perception. ... Rigidly Denying Himself The Amusement Of Philosophy, Which Consists Chiefly In Suggesting Unintelligible Answers To Insoluble Problems, And Liked To Wander Past Them In A Courteous Temper, Even Bowing To Them Distantly As Though Recognizing Their Existence, While Doubting Their Respectibility.

There Are Two Things That Seem To Be At The Bottom Of Our Constitutions; One Is A Continual Tendency Towards Politics; The Other Is Family Pride; And It Is Strange How These Two Feelings Run Through All Of Us.