The family is constantly changing, as each member changes. Some changes we recognize as developments, and the pleasure they bring ...usually makes us more adaptable. Some changes threaten, or disappoint other members, who may try to resist the change, or punish someone for changing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than that ...someone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of divorce has not even been scratched yet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wherever you see a man who gives someone else's corruption, someone else's prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, yo...u see a cog in The Machine that governs us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So far no actual revolutionary masses have come into view. This might be considered sufficient reason for reproaching someone who ...has set out to describe a revolution. But it is not our fault. This is, after all, a German revolution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Food has it over sex for variety. Hedonistically, gustatory possibilities are much broader than copulatory ones. Literarily, readi...ng about food is more interesting than reading about sex. The authors of The Physiology of Taste and of Histoire d'O, for example, are writers equally obsessed, but how charming is Brillat-Savarin's obsession, how sickening Reage's! Similarly, how delightful it is to hear someone describe a magnificent meal, or comical to hear a botched one described, whereas listening to the same person describe a seduction is almost invariably boring, if not repulsive. Perhaps the reason for this is that eating is the more social function, sex the more personal, and as such eating shows people in a greater multiplicity of poses, moods, and characters than does sex. Modern psychologists to the contrary, there is more going on at the table than in bed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A young professor I watched in action at one of our large eastern colleges used to stand with his back to the class and mumble exp...lanations of blackboard problems. He was "let out" at the end of two years because students refused to attend his classes. He was given an evasive reason for his dismissal and he left with justifiable bitterness toward the administration. If someone had told him the truth he could have avoided this denouement. Sometimes professors go on for years without any conception of remediable faults which irritate their listeners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginnin...g to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similies (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »