#nation

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#intersection #life-lines #love #marriage #married-life

I can remember when I was National Security Adviser, the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force. ↗

— Frank Carlucci

#attacks #back #community #force #gulf

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. ↗

— Thomas Carlyle

#each #far #foolish #himself #know

These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it. ↗

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#criminals #democrats #doing #international #nothing

I feel that my role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents. Primarily because of the activism and the injection of working at the Carter Center, and in international affairs, and to some degree, domestic affairs, on energy conservation, on environment, and things of that kind. ↗

— Jimmy Carter

#affairs #because #carter #center #conservation

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design. ↗

— Adam Ferguson

#ages #any #blindness #design #enlightened

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: 'We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.' ↗

— Jimmy Carter

#adjust #again #attest #ceremony #changing

Humbled by the fact that never in a million years would I ever thought that I would be on the same stage with all these great Hall of Famers and enshrined to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. ↗

— Wade Boggs

#enshrined #ever #fact #fame #great

One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father. ↗

— Lincoln Ellsworth

#determination #discouragements #earth #face #father

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality. ↗

— Irving Howe

#behind #engaging #imagination #leaving #reality