Washington not only fit the bill physically, he was also almost perfect psychologically, so comfortable with his superiority that he felt no need to explain himself. (As a young man during the French and Indian war he had been more outspoken, but he ...
Revolution was the great nightmare of eighteenth-century British society, and when first the American Revolution of 1776, then the French Revolution of 1789 overturned the accepted order, the United Kingdom exercised all its power so that revolution ...
You turn the lights on and off here and if you can’t sleep and want something to read there are books in the living room…” her voice broke off. “Wait. Can you read?” His chin took a slight tilt upward. “Aye,” Faolán replied, his voice ...
When I stepped into the brown-tiled entryway of the Kentwood Public Library, the sunlight flowing down on me from the high windows, I felt a sense of importance. It gratified me to be in a place devoted to books and quiet; I was filled with a sense o...
For more than a decade, the United States had been giving large-scale military aid to the French colonialists, and then to the American-installed but authoritarian South Vietnamese government, to fight nationalists and communists in Vietnam. More tha...
she was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now...
Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world’s finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you’ve been...
Louis was often struck by Gage's speech, not because it was cute, but because he thought that small children all sounded like immigrants learning a foreign language in some helter-skelter but fairly amiable way. He knew that babies make all the sound...
What would the new teacher, representing France, teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steamshipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fult...
[Henry] James's critical genius comes out most tellingly in his mastery over, his baffling escape from, Ideas; a mastery and an escape which are perhaps the last test of a superior intelligence. [...] In England, ideas run wild and pasture on the emo...
Without Thomas Jefferson and his Declaration of Independence, there would have been no American revolution that announced universal principles of liberty. Without his participation by the side of the unforgettable Marquis de Lafayette, there would ha...
There is perhaps some hope to be derived from the fact that in most instances where an attempt to realize an ideal society gave birth to the ugliness and violence of a prolonged active mass movement the experiment was made on a vast scale and with a ...
You know, sometimes I don't understand what's wrong with us. This is just about the most creative and imaginative country on earth—and yet sometimes we just don't seem to have the gumption to exploit our intellectual property. We split the atom, an...
Maj. Duncan Heyward: Might I inquire after the situation sir, given that I've seen the French engineering from the ridge above. Colonel Munro: The situation is that his guns are bigger than mine and he has more of them. We keep our heads down while h...
Edith: My God, what is this? It looks like a genuine Van Gogh, but I've never seen it before... Dan: Is that an original, John? John Oldman: No, it's just a gift someone gave me. Edith: Still, it's a superb copy. Contemporaneous I think, may I take a...
[Henry has gathered the family into Royal's room] Henry Sherman: Pagoda has something to say. Pagoda: [points at Royal] He has a cancer. Henry Sherman: No, he doesn't. I know what stomach cancer looks like. I've seen it. And you don't eat three chees...
Bryan: [after Jean Claude tries to shoot him] That is what happens when you sit behind a desk. You forget things, like the weight in the hand of a gun that's loaded and one that's not. [Bryan pulls his gun and shoots Isabelle in the arm] Jean Claude:...
[after Captain Steele caught Sgt. Pilla imitating him] Steele: Quick word, Specialist. Dominick Pilla: Sir. [gives the middle finger to his fellow soldiers while walking with Steele] Steele: Tell me, Pilla. You understand why we have a chain of comma...
I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as mu...
Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true open of security and opportunity and fellowship and respect.
You don’t get lucky without preparation, and there’s no sense in being prepared if you’re not open to the possibility of a glorious accident.
