The author reveals a cultural change that took place when clergy were paid based on a tax on the land's value rather than what it produced. This meant that, while parishioners could suffer through a terrible year, clergy would always have a comfortab...
For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem as if the whole impulse of fashion has been to look maximally ridiculous. If one could be maximall...
It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average p...
Do you know what the overhead is of the Medicare system? One-point-zero-five percent. Do you know what - private insurance is 30 percent in overhead and profits? Given a choice how I'm going to improve health care, I'm going to take it away from priv...
The only time the private parts of someone's life are relevant is when they're affecting public performance. And just because someone is a public person doesn't mean that any part of his or her private life is open to scrutiny. If someone is doing hi...
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Are you shook up? Are you nervous? Private Cowboy: Sir, I am, sir. Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Do I make you nervous? Private Cowboy: Sir? Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: "Sir" what? Were you about to call me an asshole?
[at the Firing Range, Pvt. Pyle is shooting at the targets, doing an impressive job while Hartman watches] Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Outstanding, Private Pyle. I think we finally found something that you do well. Private Gomer Pyle: Sir, yes, sir!
Sergeant Horvath: Maybe I should go up the middle, sir. Captain Miller: The way you run? I don't think so. Sergeant Horvath: Maybe I should go up the left, sir. Captain Miller: Maybe you should shut up!
I'm a kind of private guy.
I'm a private kind of person.
A book is a private thing, citizen; it belongs to the one who writes it and to the one who reads it. Like the mind itself, a book is a private space. Within that space, anything is possible. The greatest evil and the greatest good.
Whenever the communists are under fire, it [the term "red-baiter"] has served to divert attention from the subject matter to futile discussion of personal motives, the critic’s private life and other deliberate tricks of befuddlement.
The burning zeal....that had led her to India had apparently vanished. At the same time....she clung steadfastly to the faith she professed, and without a drop of consolation, labored wholeheartedly in her daily service....of the poor.
It was an odd situation. For a century and a half, men got rid of their own hair, which was perfectly comfortable, and instead covered their heads with something foreign and uncomfortable. Very often it was actually their own hair made into a wig. Pe...
Vitamin B proved to be not one vitamin but several, which is why we have B1, B2, and so on. To add to the confusion, Vitamin K has nothing to do with an alphabetical sequence. It was called K because its Danish discoverer, Henrik Dam, dubbed it "koag...
Door Gunner: Git some! Git some! Git some, yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC! You guys oughta do a story about me sometime! Private Joker: Why should we do a story about you? Door Gunner: 'C...
At times I make music, but in private.
A princely mind will undo a private family.
I'm so private and I don't know why!
I am a private human.
Note, though, something else of great significance about the whole Christian theology of resurrection, ascension, second coming, and hope. This theology was born out of confrontation with the political authorities, out of the conviction that Jesus wa...