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No element of Mr. Lincoln's character," declared his colleague Henry Whitney, "was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy." His law partner William Herndon said, "His melancholy dripped from him as he walked."
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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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 showed cheer--the appearance of happiness.
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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898c106
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The suffering he had endured lent him clarity, discipline, and faith in hard times--perhaps especially in hard times.
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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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?"
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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Another well-known study, led by Nancy Andreasen, used structured interviews and matched control groups to examine thirty writers at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Eighty percent of the writers met formal criteria for a major mood disorder, compared with thirty percent of controls matched for age, education, and sex.
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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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 change their lives by renouncing sin and accepting Christ. From this same pool of thought rose a wave of healers who claimed that disease wasn't a product of inscrutable humors that needed to be poisoned or purged from the body, but natural ph..
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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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."
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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f379d8b
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An argument can be made--a rigorous, persuasive argument--that every good new thing results from a teeming complexity.
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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459ac60
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You say you are conservative--eminently conservative--while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by 'our fathers who framed the Government under which we live'; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old p..
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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e8c424b
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In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares.
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |
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As the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison writes, "There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that, compared to 'normal' individuals, artists, writers, and creative people in general are both psychologically 'sicker'--that is, they score higher on a wide variety of measures of psychopathology--and psychologically healthier (for example, they show quite elevated scores on measures of self-confidence and ego strength)"
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Joshua Wolf Shenk |