Shenk Quotes

#1. Her brother-in-law Ninian Edwards said bluntly, She could make a bishop forget his prayers.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#2. They saw him as he was, a full man whose griefs and solaces and talents ran together.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#3. Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic,

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#4. In a modern dictionary, the noun "melancholy" has two definitions. First, it means "thoughtful or gentle sadness.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#5. Microsoft, by some accounts, the second most capitalized company on the planet, is the only corporate colossus in history whose entire product line could be eliminated with a giant magnet.

David Shenk

#6. Suffering was not a punishment from beyond or a malevolent infestation of the soul. Like the earth turning on its axis or energy passing through a conductor, it was a part of the natural world, to be studied, understood, and, when possible, managed.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#7. The individuals in great dyads will be very different from each other and very much alike. These simultaneous extremes generate the deep rapport and energizing friction that define a creative pair.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#8. The electronic town hall allows for speedy communications and bad decision-making.

David Shenk

#9. One crucial distinction between major depression and chronic depression is that, in the latter, one largely ceases to howl in protest that the world is hard or painful. Rather, one becomes accustomed to it, expecting such hardship and greeting it with, at best, a stoic determination.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#10. Contrary to what we've been taught, genes do not determine physical and character traits on their own. Rather, they interact with the environment in a dynamic, ongoing process that produces and continually refines an individual

David Shenk

#11. The distinction is essential. Fault implies a failure or weakness for which a person should be held to account, if not outright blamed. Misfortune is an unhappy circumstance, something bad that has happened to a blameless good person.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#12. How true it is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' or in other words, that He renders the worst of human conditions tolerable, while He permits the best, to be nothing better than tolerable.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#13. High-level creative exchange depends on both hierarchical and fluid power relationships.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#14. sickness of hope deferred,

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#15. 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 world before returning to it to share what has been revealed to them.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#16. The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of thought and belief a logical next step.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#17. An argument can be made - a rigorous, persuasive argument - that every good new thing results from a teeming complexity.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#18. Perhaps," observes James McPherson, "McClellan's career had been too successful. He had never known . . . the despair of defeat or the humiliation of failure. He had never learned the lessons of adversity and humility." Lincoln had clearly learned those lessons.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#19. Don't you find," he said, "judging from his picture, that his eyes are full of tears and that his lips are sad with a secret sorrow?

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#20. The Perspectives of Psychiatry, Paul R. McHugh and Phillip R. Slavney identify four approaches to a suffering person.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#21. As late as 1820, families made three quarters of all goods - food, clothing, tools - for their own use.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#22. History is not what happened in the past, but the best story we can tell with the available material

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#23. The suffering he had endured lent him clarity, discipline, and faith in hard times - perhaps especially in hard times.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#24. As Frederick Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#25. In particular, he named three kinds of troubles that could beset a person with a nervous temperament: poor weather, isolation or idleness, and stressful events.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#26. A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called "a fearful gift." The burden was a sadness and despair that could tip into a state of disease. But the gift was a capacity for depth, wisdom - even genius.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#27. People expected too much, pushed themselves too hard, and therefore brought strains upon their minds that they were constitutionally incapable of withstanding.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#28. He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his first step toward claiming his own ground as a person who, through no fault of his own, needed help.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#29. Did you know that Lincoln liked popcorn, and oysters, and a good strong cup of coffee?

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#30. It is a signal feature of depression that, in times of trouble, sensible ideas, memories of good times, and optimism for the future all recede into blackness.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#31. You," she said, "are the ugliest man I ever saw." Sadly, the man answered, "Perhaps so, but I can't help that." "No," the woman allowed, "but you might stay at home.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#32. 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 other endeavor.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#33. 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 convention floor, "I then thought him one of the most diffident and worst plagued men I ever saw.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#34. 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.

Joshua Wolf Shenk

#35. Talent is a process, not a thing. Failure is not proof of an innate limit but rather is an indication of a skill we haven't yet developed.

David Shenk

#36. 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 danger - of something emerging and ascending.

Joshua Wolf Shenk