There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of ...the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to "dress up like daddy."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it,..." they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is one of the most discouraging experiences I have ever had, not forgetting the time when I winked at the Queen Mother in Londo...n once.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The windows were then closed and the steam turned on. There was a sign up saying that no one could smoke, but you couldn't help it.... You were lucky if you didn't burst into flames.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of toothpaste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are pla...nning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their f...ox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those great ideas which come to you in your sleep just before you awake in morning, those solutions to the world's problems which,... in the light of day, turn out to be duds of the puniest order, couldn't they be put to some use, after all?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are various forms of the disease which the victim is unable to say "No." Some of these forms are more serious than others, a...nd often lead to electrocution or marriage.... "No-phobia" reaches its height of futility when someone is giving you directions as to how to reach some place that you really want to reach.... The result is, I spend the night crashing up and down the wrong streets and am known as a boor who never arrives on time. And all because I didn't have the guts to say, "I haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »