Put plainly, Lincoln was a politician, building a public life on points that could be sustained by popular opinion—or, in extreme cases, sustained despite popular opinion. Doing good depended on winni...
In a modern dictionary, the noun melancholy has two definitions. First, it means thoughtful or gentle sadness.
Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. Late
In the early nineteenth century, a new culture—a new idea about what to hope for—emerged for many Americans, centered around the independent self, under nation and God.
That solitude promotes insight as well as change, Storr continues, has been recognized by the great religious leaders—including the Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed—who have usually retreated from the worl...
High-level creative exchange depends on both hierarchical and fluid power relationships.
Yet a period’s character does affect individual character. Psychology, the study of what happens in our minds, is tightly interwoven with culture, the name we give to our beliefs, practices, and socia...
In the fourth century, John Cassian described a condition among his fellow monks that he called acedia: a weariness or distress of heart . . . akin to dejection that took possession of unhappy souls a...
One of the basic ideas of the evangelical movement in the early nineteenth century was that people could help themselves. Rather than wonder and fear the fate God decreed for them, they could actively...
Of all the paradoxes of Lincoln’s life, none is more powerful than the fact that the man who would come to be known throughout the world—from American schoolrooms to the tribal councils of the Caucasu...
Though major depression is often associated with lethargy to the point of being frozen, many people with chronic depression not only work well but devote more energy to their vocation than to any othe...
In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.
At the same time that self-made entered the nation’s lexicon, so did the notion of abject failure. Once reserved to describe a discrete financial episode—I made a failure, a merchant would say after l...
Yet, to the wigwam audience in Decatur, Lincoln presented a strange figure. He didn’t seem euphoric, or triumphant, or even pleased. To the contrary, said a man named Johnson, observing from the conve...
As president, he explained why he would pardon soldiers who deserted for cowardice: It would frighten the poor devils to death to shoot them.
Sickness of hope deferred,
Today, many people not only take the self for granted but struggle mightily to connect it to anything larger. In Lincoln’s time, the idea of the self had the power—tinged with uncertainty, even with d...
As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal. We now practically read it, ‘all men are created equal, except negroes. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, ‘all men a...
Am loth to close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies, but fellow countrymen and brethren friends. We must not be enemies. AlThough passion may have has strained, it must not break our bonds o...
And he was moved by the contrast with his own condition. A free man, relatively prosperous, just ending five weeks in luxury’s lap, and he was quite unhappy. The slaves, treated abominably, at least s...
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