For some natures, changing their opinions is just as much a requirement of cleanliness as changing their clothes: for others, howe...ver, it is merely a requirement of vanity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the mor...e it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What side of American life is not touched by this antithesis? What explanation of American life is more central or more illuminati...ng? In everything one finds this frank acceptance of twin values which are not expected to have anything in common: on the one hand, a quite unclouded, quite unhypothetical assumption of aesthetic theory ("high ideals"), on the other a simultaneous acceptance of catchpenny realities. Between university ethics and business ethics, between American culture and American humour, between Good Government and Tammany, between academic pedantry and pavement slang, there is no community, no genial middle ground. The very accent of the words "Highbrow" and "Lowbrow" implies an instinctive perception that this is a very unsatisfactory state of affairs. For both are used in a derogatory sense. The "Highbrow" is the superior person whose virtue is admitted but felt to be an inept unpalatable virtue; while the "Lowbrow" is a good fellow one readily takes to, but with a certain scorn for him and all his works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A requirement of femininity is that a woman devote her life to love--to mother love, to romantic love, to religious love, to amorp...hous, undifferentiated caring. The territory of the heart is admittedly a province that is open to all, but women alone are expected to make an obsessional career of its exploration, to find whatever adventure, power, fulfillment or tragedy life has to offer within its bounds. There is no question that a woman is apt to feel more feminine, more confident of her interior gender makeup, when she is reliably within some stage of love--even the girlish crush or the stage of unrequited love or a broken heart. Men have suffered for love, and men have accomplished great feats in the name of love, but what man has ever felt at the top of his masculine form when he is lovesick or suffering from heartache?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The academic expectations for a child just beginning school are minimal. You want your child to come to preschool feeling happy, r...easonably secure, and eager to explore and learn.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you a...re sure to have a spiritual harem.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that positions be taken on curren...t issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let daemons possess us! Let us terrify like Erynnes, the whole tribe of academic Grecians! Because (I state it inspired and c...alm and daemonaical) they know nothing!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »