"As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/tdoaom/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult. The atmosphere of hatred in which controversy is conducted blinds people to considerations of this kind. To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. It is this habit of mind, among other things, that has made political prediction in our time so remarkably unsuccessful.
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.”
Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2
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Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes
The Art of Persuasion
Context: Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them... the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.
“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”
“Obtain power, then, by all means; power is the law of man; make it yours.”
"An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification" (1795); Tales and Novels, vol. 1, p. 206.
“Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.”
1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
Context: It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Discourses (1967), p. 364.
General sources
Context: One of the most difficult things to learn is to render service without bossing, without making a fuss about it, and without any consciousness of high and low. In the world of spirituality, humility counts at least as much as utility.
“Sloth makes all things difficult. ”