Americans have always been able to handle austerity and even adversity. Prosperity is what is doing us in.
Interpretation
True strength is found in overcoming challenges rather than in the comfort of prosperity.
James Reston's quote emphasizes that Americans have historically thrived in challenging times, suggesting that it is through adversity that resilience and character are forged. By highlighting that prosperity can lead to complacency and even decline, Reston warns against the pitfalls of comfort and advocates for the value of embracing difficulties to foster growth and strength.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges in business.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.
It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief - the other contempt.
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter β the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
Let us be cautious in making assertions and critical in examining them, but tolerant in permitting linguistic forms.
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