“At the same time that “self-made” entered the nation’s lexicon, so did the notion of abject failure. Once reserved to describe a discrete financial episode—“I made a failure,” a merchant would say after losing his shop—“failure” in antebellum America became… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“The Perspectives of Psychiatry, Paul R. McHugh and Phillip R. Slavney identify four approaches to a suffering person.” — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“The individuals in great dyads will be very different from each other and very much alike. These simultaneous extremes generate the deep rapport and… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“In the fourth century, John Cassian described a condition among his fellow monks that he called “acedia”: a “weariness or distress of heart . . .… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“creeping fear of madness often accompanies depression. Sufferers wonder if their black moods will ever lift, or if their feelings of alienation from the… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“The American tradition of separation of church and state grew directly from the freethinking of the Founders. After political independence, they considered independence of… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“A person with a melancholy temperament had been fated with both an awful burden and what Byron called “a fearful gift.” The burden was… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“because of them, he worked all the harder in his thirties and forties to “make himself,” emotionally as well as materially, and go on… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“The distinction is essential. Fault implies a failure or weakness for which a person should be held to account, if not outright blamed. Misfortune… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“In the early nineteenth century, a new culture—a new idea about what to hope for—emerged for many Americans, centered around the independent self, under… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“ONE OF THE REASONS that depression is so problematic—and deadly, leading to many of the forty thousand suicides in the United States each year—is… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism,… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“As late as 1820, families made three quarters of all goods—food, clothing, tools—for their own use.” — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“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… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
“Suffering was not a punishment from beyond or a malevolent infestation of the soul. Like the earth turning on its axis or energy passing… — Joshua Wolf Shenk Copy Share Image
