“It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one.”
Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 2, Ceremonies of Innocence, p. 175
Source: The Pastures of Heaven
“It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one.”
Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 2, Ceremonies of Innocence, p. 175
La solitude est certainement une belle chose, mais il y a plaisir d'avoir quelqu'un qui sache répondre, à qui on puisse dire de temps en temps, que c'est un belle chose.
Dissertations chrétiennes et morales (1665), XVIII: "Les plaisirs de la vie retirée".
as reported by Demetrius of Phalerum in Apophthegms of the Seven Sages, Loeb Classical Library, volume 525 Early Greek Philosophy, p. 137
Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (May 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.
“Music is a fine thing, but metal lasts.”
He struck the table with two huge fingers to emphasize his point....
As I left, I thought about what Kilvin had said. It was the first thing he had said to me that I did not agree with wholeheartedly. Metal rusts, I thought, music lasts forever.
Time will eventually prove one of us right.
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 60, “Fortune” (pp. 443-444; ellipsis represents minor elision of description)
Interview, Popjustice.com http://www.popjustice.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4801&Itemid=9
“It is a fine thing to have a society that holds up”
1910s, Address to the Knights of Columbus (1915)
Context: Justice Bowling in his speech has described the excellent fourth degree of your order, of how in it you dwell upon duties rather than rights, upon the great duties of patriotism and of national spirit. It is a fine thing to have a society that holds up such a standard of duty. I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Americanization, the fusing into one nation, a nation necessarily different from all other nations, of all who come to our shores. Pay heed to the three principal essentials: (i) the need of a common language, with a minimum amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a common civil standard, similar ideals, beliefs, and customs symbolized by the oath of allegiance to America; and (3) the need of a high standard of living, of reasonable equality of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In every great crisis in our history, in the Revolution and in the Civil War, and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish war, all factions and races have been forgotten in the common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and Catholic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of German, descent have joined with a single-minded purpose to secure for the country what only can be achieved by the resultant union of all patriotic citizens. You of this organization have done a great service by your insistence that citizens should pay heed first of all to their duties. Hitherto undue prominence has been given to the question of rights. Your organization is a splendid engine for giving to the stranger within our gates a high conception of American citizenship. Strive for unity. We suffer at present from a lack of leadership in these matters.
“What a Devil is the Plot good for, but to bring in fine things?”
Bayes, Act III, sc. i
The Rehearsal (1671)