Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Once, speaking of the room in the Capitol used by the Presidents of the United States during the close of a session of Congress, he said, 'That room, you know, that they call' dropping his voice and hesitating 'the President's room. To an intimate friend who addressed him always by his own proper title, he said, 'Now call me Lincoln, and I'll promise not to tell of the breach of etiquette if you, won't and I shall have a resting-spell from "Mister President." With all his simplicity and unacquaintance with courtly manners, his native dignity never forsook him in the presence of critical polished strangers; but mixed with his angularities and bonhomie was something which spoke the fine fiber of the man; and while his sovereign disregard of courtly conventionalities was somewhat ludicrous, his native sweetness and straightforwardness of manner served to disarm criticism and impress the visitor that he was before a man pure, self-poised, collected, and strong in unconscious strength.

Each class learns a great deal from the other. On the one side, social conceit and exclusiveness give way to the free spirit of competition amongst all classes; on the other side, angularities and prejudices are rubbed away." Even this I might have swallowed.

If you wish to play Chopin, play him in curves; let there be no angularities of surface, of measure, but in the name of the Beautiful do not deliver his exquisitely balanced phrases with the jolting, balky eloquence of a cafe chantant singer.

I fear even the deft graciousness of the highest art could not have softened the rigid angularities of that youthful figure, its self-complacent vulgarity, its cheap finery, its expressionless ill-favor. York did not look at it a second time. He turned to the letter for relief. It was misspelled; it was unpunctuated; it was almost illegible; it was fretful in tone, and selfish in sentiment.

On the one side, harsh, disfigured angularities, on the other, graceful forms and curving outlines; there, the cold, dumb stillness of unfruitful earth held up by horizontal blocks of stone and naked rock, here, trees of various greens, now stripped for the most part of foliage, but showing their fine straight many-colored trunks on every slope and terrace of the land; their interlacing branches swaying to the breeze.

She left the room abruptly, and the orphan lay in the gathering gloom of twilight, perplexed, distressed, and wondering how she could avoid all the angularities of this amiable character, under whose roof fate seemed to have deposited her.

She had never manifested much interest in her nephew, but since she was his nearest relative he felt that he could not do less than call upon her. To his agreeable surprise he found that time had mellowed her spirit and softened her angularities. After the death of her husband she had developed unusual ability to take care of herself, and had shown little disposition to take care of any one else.

There are a number of critics, following the lead of Coleridge, who tells us that Shakespeare's judgment is commensurate with his genius; but they speak of the former generally as if it were always unfettered, and neglect to add that it was continually influenced by the conditions under which he wrote, and that it was often his task to discover a route to a successful result through the tortuous angularities of a preconceived foreground.

If put to guess his calling and livelihood, I should have taken him for a country schoolmaster as soon as anything else. He was dressed in a rusty black frock-coat and pantaloons, unbrushed, and worn so faithfully that the suit had adapted itself to the curves and angularities of his figure, and had grown to be an outer skin of the man. He had shabby slippers on his feet.

The natural character must be allowed to appear, freed of its angularities and asperities. Without genuineness and individuality, human life would lose much of its interest and variety, as well as its manliness and robustness of character. True courtesy is kind. It exhibits itself in the disposition to contribute to the happiness of others, and in refraining from all that may annoy them.