The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through. Alexis de Tocqueville
The swimmer adrift on the open seas measures his strength, and strives with all his muscles to keep himself afloat. But what is he to do when there is no land on the horizon, and none beyond it? Georges Duhamel
The sword is very handsome. I am too old and infirm, as you see, to ever use a sword again, but I am glad that my old mother state has not entirely forgotten me. George Rogers Clark
The Swords were still interesting but by then a cast of characters had started to appear and go on from book to book, and other things about the world began to feel constricting. And there were other things I wanted to do, so I closed the series up and stopped it. Fred Saberhagen
The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. Henry A. Wallace
The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance. Sol LeWitt
The talk of winning our share is not the easy one of disengagement and flight, but the hard one of work, of short as well as long jumps, of disappointments, and of sweet success. Roy Wilkins
The task of a priest, in some respects, may be different today, but the principles upon which Herbert built his life as a priest are of universal application. Arthur Middleton
The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony. John Cheever
