Quotes from Les Standiford

watched the flash of guardrails, saw

The more a man learns, Dickens said, "the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time… he will become more tolerant of other men's belief in all matters, and will incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to differ from his own.

That's easy," Russell said. "Because everybody else in this here place is crooked as a dog's hind leg. ...

the value of a personal fortune is better understood in relation to the total gross national product of an individual's era. By that measure, Carnegie was worth $112 billion in his day, far ahead of Bill Gates ($85 billion), Sam Walton ($42 billion), or Warren Buffett ($31 billion).

To Dickens, true charity was a matter of openhearted benevolence; to use the relief of poverty as a cudgel to beat a recipient into piousness was repellent and evil.

Dickens believed that a reasonable capitalistic society could be made to recognize its responsibility to all its citizens, and that it was the duty of those most fortunate to share a portion of their gain with those whose grasp had slipped while pulling at their bootstraps.

You don't seem to care to talk about yourself," [Lefevre] said to Flagler. "I prefer to let what I have done speak for me," Flagler replied. "By their works ye shall know them," Lefevre suggested. "Yes, that's it," Flagler said - as eagerly as he had said anything, according to his interviewer.

he formed a lifelong commitment to the distinction between "justice" and "the law.

As even newly elected presidents have learned, trying to correct the conduct of business as usual in the federal bureaucracy is like trying to nudge an ocean liner off its path by standing on a rubber raft and pressing on the liner's hull with your bare hands as it speeds by.

Then why on earth had she never told anyone about these things? Matthews asked. Linda didn't miss a beat. "Because no one ever asked," she said. "You're the first that ever did.

The train's conductor, J. F. Gamble, flung himself into the cab, his uniform soaked and dripping, to report the worst: one of the hundred-ton boxcars at the rear of the train had been toppled by the wind and waves, automatically locking the air brakes on the entire chain.

Society." John Forster, who would one day become Dickens's great friend, adviser, editor, and first biographer, wrote in the Examiner that Dickens had excelled particularly in his portraits of the ludicrous and the pathetic, all rendered in an "agreeable, racy style.

Dickens's enduring themes: the deleterious effects of ignorance and want, the necessity for charity, the benefits of goodwill, family unity, and the need for celebration of the life force, including the pleasures of good food and drink, and good company.

Ebenezer Scrooge is no castoff drunk, but the very emblem of economic achievement.

allowing the cynical reader to proceed contentedly through the story alongside the sentimentalist.

It's like you've been in a terrible accident and had your arm amputated," she told him. "After a while, the pain goes away, and eventually you even learn to get along without your arm. Some days you're sad that you're missing your arm, and some days you're angry about it, and some days you're okay. But, no matter what, no matter how long it's been, you never stop missing your arm.

led to the emigration of one such unemployed Scottish hand-weaver named Carnegie to the United States, where his son Andrew would become the chief industrialist of all time.)

One worker housed in Camp No. 10 on Key Vaca was overheard to say, "Building this railroad has become a regular marathon." The remark struck a chord in his fellow workers, who dubbed their camp "Marathon," the name by which the nearby town, the second-largest in the Keys, is known today.

According to California Department of Transportation figures, upward of 275,000 vehicles travel Interstae 5 through the Newhall Pass dividing the Santa Clarita and San Fernando watersheds each day. There is no way to tally the number of individuals inside those vehicles, but taking into account the tendency of the average American driver, it is safe to speculate that at least 275,001 travelers per day have the opportunity to glance eastward of the thundering highway ...

In his profession, Wright had seen horror stacked on horror, plenty of evidence that there was no shortage of hell right here on earth. As to what had kept him sane in the face of all that he had witnessed, it was a simple sense of purpose. "It is that simple, John," Wright said. "There is evil. And there is good.

The houses there sat on lots of an acre or more, and some neighbors still kept horses. The urban centers of Fort Lauderdale and Miami were nearby, and if you wanted a dose of the city, you could easily get it.

The more a man learns, Dickens said, "the better, gentler, kinder man he must become. When he knows how much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time…he will become more tolerant of other men's belief in all matters

And yet he forced himself to confront hard truths. Perhaps it was not "them"—the jealous critics and the fickle readers—in whom the fault lay. Perhaps he had let his disappointment with America in particular and with human nature in general overwhelm his powers of storytelling and characterization in his recent work—perhaps he had simply taken it for granted that an adoring public would sit still for whatever he offered it.

Most important, perhaps there was a way to do so without browbeating or scolding, or mounting a soapbox. Perhaps he could get them without their knowing they were got. If he could only find the way.