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Old 01-13-2006, 07:43 AM   #37 (permalink)
little_tippler
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rodney
Okay, I had to research it. Term was coined by a guy named James Truslow Adams in 1931 in a book called "The Epic of America." If you really want to know what he meant....

http://courses.lib.odu.edu/engl/jhrichar/as300.html
I'm not American but this is an excerpt from the link above which I would say sums it up:

"the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. . . . It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.


Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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