Defining Empty Sums

Famous quotes containing the words defining, empty and/or sums:

    “The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.”
    —David Blankenhorn (20th century)

    “History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
    A thousand and one remains a thousand,
    as though the one had never existed:
    an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
    ...
    emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
    nobody’s place in line.”
    —Wislawa Szymborska (b. 1923)

    “At Timon’s villalet us pass a day,
    Where all cry out,What sums are thrown away!’”
    —Alexander Pope (1688–1744)