I have just returned from home where I spent the holidays frolicking with the girls and laughing almost constantly either at my ow...n folly or that of others. Like most youngsters whose time has been spent at school where we have little society of any kind, and none of the ladies, I am quite bashful when in company, and of course very awkward. This, instead of causing me mortification, affords me an infinite deal of amusement. I know my deficiency and, instead of lamenting over it, I make it a subject of sport both for myself and others who observe it. In this way I avoid all of those painful feelings which torture "the bashful man," and while counterfeiting an indifference to the opinions of others which I do not feel, I often find that I have overcome the embarrassment which at first oppressed me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Books treating of etiquette ... are often written by dancing-masters and Turveydrops and others knowing little of the customs of t...he best society of any land.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My bangles left. My best friends, tears,... went on forever. My self-control wouldn't sit still for a minute. My mind made itself up to go on ahead. When my man made up his mind to go, everything else went, just like him. Life, if you must go, too, then don't forsake your entourage of friends.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the ferrets of labor, and this society does no longer know of thos...e other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are living in a society of excrescence.... The boil is grow...ing out of control, recklessly at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its... fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have all... the plagues of old age, and of a shattered carcase.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »