Eliot Ness Quotes

Happily he was modest, and took any second-rate-ness in himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority.

Se tivéssemos uma visão e uma perceção intensa da vida humana comum, seria como ouvir a erva a crescer e o coração de um esquilo a bater. Provavelmente, morreríamos com o barulho que existe do outro lado do silêncio. George Eliot, Middlemarch

Nosso esforço para ler e visualizar um romance está relacionado com nosso desejo de ser especiais e distinguir-nos dos outros. E esse sentimento tem a ver com nosso desejo de identificar- nos com as personagens do romance, cuja vida é diferente da nossa. Lendo Ulysses, sentimo-nos bem, em primeiro lugar, porque tentamos identificar-nos com as personagens, cuja vida, cujos sonhos, ambiente, temores, planos e tradições são tão diferentes dos nossos. Mas depois esse sentimento é ampliado por nossa consciência de que estamos lendo um romance "difícil" - e, no fundo, sentimo-nos empenhados numa atividade de certa distinção. Quando lemos a obra de um escritor desafiador como Joyce, parte de nosso cérebro está ocupada se congratulando conosco por lermos um escritor como Joyce. Quando tirou da bolsa seu volume de Proust, no dia da matrícula, Ayse pretendia não desperdiçar o tempo que passaria na fila; mas provavelmente também queria mostrar como era diferente, fazendo um gesto social que lhe permitiria encontrar outros estudantes iguais a ela. Poderíamos descrevê-Ia como uma leitora sentimental-reflexiva, consciente do significado de seu gesto. E é provável que Zeynep fosse o tipo de leitora ingênua que, comparada com Ayse, tinha menos consciência do ar de distinção que um romance pode conferir a seus leitores. Ao menos podemos imaginar, sem correr o risco de estar enganados, que assim Ayse a via. A ingenuidade e a sentimentalidade do leitor – como uma consciência do artifício do romance - estão relacionadas com um interesse pelo contexto e pela maneira como se lê um romance e com o lugar do escritor nesse contexto.

I pulsed in a brief electric calm, an almost safety, where my me-ness was a shrug or a long drag of a cigarette, a hot conversation out front, a laugh, a nod. Where I could exist at full volume, where the fact of me wasn't a disruption but an unquestioned, integrated fact of my being.

Christian non-violence does not encourage or excuse hatred of a special class, nation or social group. It is not merely anti-this or that. In other words, the Evangelical hate for realism which is demanded of the Christian should make it impossible for him to generalize about "the wicked" against whom he takes up moral arms in a struggle for righteous-ness. He will not let himself be persuaded that the adversary is totally wicked and can therefore never be reasonable or well-intentioned, and hence need never be listened to. This attitude, which defeats the very purpose of non-violence—openness, communication, dialogue—often accounts for the fact that some acts of civil disobedience merely antagonize the adversary without making him willing to communicate in any way whatever, except with bullets or missiles. Thomas à Becket, in Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, debated with himself, fearing that he might be seeking Martyrdom merely in order to demonstrate his own righteousness and the King's injustice: "This is the treason, to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Some of what makes us human is our smallness. The brevity of our lifespans, the shortness of our memories, the narrowness of each person's field of vision. My Marian-ness is in the slender sample of the world that I am able to bring to my work. If we did not have this smallness, these limits, there would be no way to tell Ffarmer from Sappho, or Eliot, or anybody. So what was I to make of Charlotte--not small but all-devouring, ubiquitous, remembering? Anointed, in a way, by her magnitude. And at the same time, I am certain, diminished by it.

The name of the Treasury agent Eliot Ness meant little then, but it was he who ordered wiretaps on the house as well as on Ralph’s suite at the Western Hotel (as the Hawthorne had recently been renamed).

On May 16, 1925, a young reverend from Berwyn named Henry C. Hoover arranged to have deputy sheriffs raid Capone’s big Cicero casino, the Hawthorne Smoke Shop. Shortly after raiders burst in, Capone arrived wearing pajamas and an overcoat, unshaven and surly. Rarely rising before noon, he’d been summoned from bed at the hotel next door. When he tried to force his way inside, a real estate broker turned deputy blocked his way. “What do you think this is,” the broker asked, “a party?” “It ought to be my party,” Capone snarled. “I own the place.” The broker took a harder look at Capone, saw the long scar, and bid him, “Come on in.” Another raider brought Capone upstairs, where the men were dismantling and carting off gaming equipment. Capone claimed he was being picked on, then said ominously, “This is the last raid you will ever make.” Reverend Hoover watched the man in pajamas clean out the cash register and asked him who he was. “Al Brown,” Capone shot back, invoking his preferred alias, “if that is good enough for you.” “Muttering and grumbling, Capone went out,” the reverend recalled, “and disappeared down the stairs. Some time later . . . he re-appeared, neatly dressed and shaven and clothed in an entirely different spirit.” “Reverend,” he asked, “can’t we get together?” “What do you mean, Mr. Capone?” “I give to churches,” Capone said, “and I give to charity . . . if you will let up on me in Cicero, I will withdraw from Stickney.

Born of the Great War, this “trench broom” meant to help American doughboys sweep their way across Europe. But the conflict ended too soon for the Thompson to take part, and many of the fifteen thousand guns in circulation by 1929 ended up in private hands. Because the weapon was so new, few laws governed its sale. Legally purchasing a tommy gun in Chicago, in those days, was easier than acquiring a handgun.

Eliot knew the Heights well enough to have spent as little time there as possible while growing up. The town’s small downtown had some class, especially the Hotel Victoria, designed by Louis Sullivan, but it was a thin facade. Three blocks in any direction and you felt like you might be set upon by wild dogs.