Famous quotes containing the words years, long and/or service:
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Swann was one of those men who, having long lived in the illusions of love, saw the well-being that they gave to many women heighten their happiness without evoking in these women any gratitude, any tenderness toward them; but in their child these men believe they feel an affection which, embodied in their very name, will make them outlast their death. When there was to no longer be a Charles Swann, there would still be a Mademoiselle Swann ... who would continue to love her departed father.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)