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“Today he'll talk about Hardy's elegies. "But what are they about?", his students will ask. They want the love story. How he hates this question, understanding, now, in the shade of his office, that poetry is among the few things that can survive this question. If the poem is very good it is very hard to say what it is about. It is this and it is not that. It seems like one thing and then, after a while, not so much, one's understanding always shifting with the images and the sounds. He'll add something on Tennyson, perhaps, something on rhyme. Something about that very question, about poems being on of the few things that cannot be summarized or that can survive such an evil with something left over, something else. Something remaining. A trouble. A pleasure. A little extra.”

LoveUnderstandingPoemMeaningStorySummary
Book:The Other Side of the World
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“Daylight...In my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and the neighborhood was busy. Miss Stephenie Crawford crossed the street to tell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Maudie bent over the azaleas. It was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk toward a man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the children raced each other to him. It was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yeard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall and his children fought ont he sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose's. The boy helped his sister to her feet and they made their way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day's woe's and triymph's on their face. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and show a dog. Summer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, and Boo's children needed him.”

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Book:To Kill a Mockingbird
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“In all summaries, the problems seem simpler than they actually are. In the following conclusions, anxiety may sound again like an abnormal condition affecting only unfortunate individuals. I would like to emphasize again that anxiety is a life-long challenge. The tradegy of Brown is that his anxiety, which was severe enough at times to remove almost all possibilities from his existence, is mainly destructive and paralyzingly rather than challenging and enlivening. I hope the reader will keep in mind the essential humanness of anxiety.”

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Book:The Meaning Of Anxiety
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“Having reviewed diverse theories and hypotheses on the waning of the Age of Enlightenment in Central Asia, it is now time to step back and raise a larger question: does it really require an explanation? The assumption behind our search for causes is that if one or another factor had not come into play, the movement of thought would have continued. But that great period of intense cerebration, that age of inquiry and innovation, had lasted for more than four centuries. If more information on the centuries preceding the Arab invasion had survived, we might confidently extend that period of flowering even further back in time. Even without this addition, the Age of Enlightenment was five times longer than the lifetime of Periclean Athens; a century longer than the entire history of the intellectual center of Alexandria from its foundation to the destruction of its library; only slightly shorter than the entire life span of the Roman Republic; longer than the Ming or Qing dynasties in China and the same length as the Han; about the same length as the history of Japan from the founding of the Tokugawa dynasty to the present; and of England from the age of Shakespeare to our own day. As they say in the theater world, it had a long run. It is well and good to speak of causes of the decline of the passion for inquiry and innovation, or of some supposed exhaustion of creative energies. But just as we feel little need to discover the cause of a nonagenarian’s death, we need not inquire too urgently into the cause of the waning of this remarkable age. Of course, the question of why the region as a whole remained in a state of backwardness from the end of the Age of Enlightenment down to recent times is vitally important, but it involves many factors besides those that came into play in the intellectual decline. It should form the subject of another book.”

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Book:Lost Enlightenment: Central Asia's Golden Age from the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane
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“We continue to receive reports that the morale of some elements is being damaged, .. They are being affected by the impunity with which NATO aircraft can operate over Kosovo and Serbia, the accuracy and the growing knowledge.. of deployed locations. In summary, NATO has eroded the capability of Milosevic's war machine and it is being further reduced as each day goes by.”

WarGrowingElementsMachinesAffectionEach DayReportsAffectedCapabilityLocationAccuracyNatoAircraftMoraleImpunitySummarySerbiaKosovoGrowing Knowledge
Author:John Day
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“In the years since then, those four freedoms - freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear - have stood as a summary of our aspirations for the American Republic and for the world.”

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Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969
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“If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.”

IfsMenGivingHas BeensSpiritTurnsNumbersQualityMankindPrideComfortMassWorkersProductionsBurdenEnormousTendenciesOur TimeDestroyingQuantityReplacedMultitudesIncompetentSummaryValuelessThoroughnessBrainlessEnormous Quantities
Book:Anarchism and Other Essays
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“What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature, (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).”

MeanDoeArtArtistCoursesReadingLiteratureTermSuccessfulFailingCreationEqualStandardsIntuitionArtisticWorldlyGood ArtSummaryGood ArtistActualizationArtistic CreationSuccessful Artists
Author:Donald Barthelme
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“I have always directed my attempts at the figurative representation of objects by way of summary and not very descriptive brushstrokes, diverging greatly from the real objective measurements of things, and this has led many people to talk about childish drawing.. ..this position of seeing them (the objects) without looking at them too much, without focussing more attention on them than any ordinary man would in normal everyday life..”

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Author:Jean Dubuffet
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“Where's my tax form? Where's the file that's supposed to hold my W-2 form and interest statement? Where's the mileage log I specifically asked be kept last year?? Where's the monthly check summary? And who's been stuffing Visa receipts in the aluminum foil drawer??!! How embarrassing. I'm surrounded by idiots and I'm the only one in the office.”

YearsLastsFormInterestTaxesOfficeChecksStatementsIdiotLast YearEmbarrassingFilesDrawersVisaSummaryReceiptsFoilsAluminumMileageAluminum Foil
Author:Cathy Guisewite
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“Mothers and fathers act in mostly similar ways toward their young children. Psychologists are still highlighting small differencesrather than the overwhelming similarities in parents' behaviors. I think this is a hangover from the 1950s re-emergence of father as a parent. He has to be special. The best summary of the evidence on mothers and fathers with their babies is that young children of both sexes, in most circumstances, like both parents equally well. Fathers, like mothers, are good parents first and gender representatives second.”

ThinkingWayFirstsWellsChildrenStillsYoungMotherFatherSexParentSpecialBabyCircumstancesBehaviorEvidenceGenderOverwhelmingRepresentativesPsychologistSimilarityYoung ChildrenEmergenceMother And FatherHangoverSummaryGood ParentLike A MotherHighlighting
Author:Sandra Scarr
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“When the business man who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competitive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is 'unprofessional,' the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men.”

MenWayLongYoungFightingBusinessGoneSpecialFitFairsDoctorsAbuseMethodFellowsAthletePrivilegeTrackCrowdsLawyerPursuitSecureYoung ManCommerceCompetitorsLong WaySummaryBusiness ManOstracism
Book:The History of the Standard Oil Company
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“I'd finished the first two [books] and they were going to to be published, and [editor] said, "We need you to write a summary that will drive people to these books." And it took forever. I couldn't think of a thing to say. I looked at the back of other children's books that were full of giddy praise and corny rhetorical questions, you know, "Will she have a better time at summer camp than she thinks?" "How will she escape from the troll's dungeon?" All these terrible, terrible summaries of books, and I just couldn't.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsNeedsWritingFirstsChildrenSaidTwoBookForeverTerribleSummerPraiseFinishedEditorsCampsCornyNeed YouChildren's BooksDungeonsTrollRhetoricalSummaryGiddySummer CampRhetorical Question
Author:Daniel Handler
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“If you're following the news, you know that the major religions differ in their interpretation of the holy books. For example, one way to interpret God's will is that you should love your neighbor. An alternate reading of the holy books might lead you to rig a donkey cart with small mortar rockets and aim it at a hotel full of infidels. In summary, po-tay-to, poh-tah-to. Religions are very flexible.”

IfsKnowsWayShouldBookMightReligionReadingLove YouExampleHolyMajorsNewsAimFollowingNeighborGods WillOne WayHotelInterpretationFlexibleRocketsCartsDonkeyInfidelSummaryMortarHoly BooksLove Your NeighborRigs
Author:Scott Adams
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“Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day.”

LightExistenceSunGreaterPerfectionUniversalFoundationExcellenceExcellentDependentFountainComprehensionBrightnessSummary
Book:The Works of Jonathan Edwards
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“Paraphrase, in the sense of summary, is as indispensable to the novel-critic as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry. The natural deduction is that novels are paraphrasable whereas poems are not. But this is a false deduction because close analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase.”

FormPoetryLiteratureNaturalNovelCriticsAnalysisIndispensableDeductionsSummaryParaphraseLyric Poetry
Book:Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel
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“I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. (On his 1968 photograph of the summary street corner execution of prisoner Nguyen Van Lem by South Vietnam's police chief, Lt. Col. Nguyen Ngoc Loan.)”

MenMadeIdeasHappensLeftWalksCommonSawsStreetsHe ManShotsPoliceCamerasThreatPreparedSouthRaisedPhotographCornersChiefsNo IdeaTemplesPrisonerVietnamQuestioningExecutionLoanVansPistolsSummaryInterrogationStreet Corners
Author:Eddie Adams
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