A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be oversophisticated. Yet it remains cheese, milk's leap toward i...mmortality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An ideologue may be defined as a mad intellectual. He is not interested in ideas, but--almost the exact contrary--in one idea. Whe...n he erects this idea into a system and forces the system to give birth to a way of life, confusion often results, usually to his great surprise. Two examples are Robespierre and Lenin. The intellectual is occasionally blamed for the work of the ideologue, which is like condemning the psychiatrist because he and the patient are both involved in the same thing, mental illness. The ideologue is often brilliant. Consequently some of us distrust brilliance when we should distrust the ideologue.... The ideologue is often more persuasive than the intellectual because he has a simpler line of goods to sell and never questions its value. Sometimes he achieves great success by attacking the real intellectual--Bryan is a good example.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They will visit you at your convenience, whether you are lonesome or not, on rainy days or fair. They propose themselves as either... transient acquaintances or permanent friends. They will stay as long as you like, departing or returning as you wish. Their friendship entails no obligation. Best of all, and not always true of our merely human friends, they have Cleopatra's infinite variety.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its ...dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »