In matters of usage there are two extremes. At the extreme right are the purists, the standpatters, the rigid traditionalists who ...brook little or no change and who go by the rules--as many rules as they can recall or invent. They may not speak or write brilliantly, but they are grammatically unassailable--except when they forget some rule or misinterpret one.... At the extreme left are the permissivists, the heretics who argue that there is no such thing as "correct" usage. They maintain that usage is what people say, but they neglect to disclose what people they are talking about--most people in general or most intelligent people or most educated people or most writing people or what. Oddly enough, despite the loose approach of the permissivists, who have made some headway in the schools, there is evidence that people do crave authority in matters of language, they do ask for rules and rulings. They do not seem to appreciate the freedom that the permissivists are so eager to bestow upon them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations; that wisdom to deal with a man's difficulties comes only throug...h some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no kind of false Wit which has been so recommended by the Practice of all Ages, as that which consists in a Jingle of Wor...ds, and is comprehended under the general Name of Punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a Weed, which the Soil has a natural Disposition to produce. The seeds of Punning are in the Minds of all Men, and tho' they may be subdued by Reason, Reflection, and good Sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest Genius, that is not broken and cultivated by the Rules of Art. Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the Mind to Poetry, Painting, Musick, or other more noble Arts, it often breaks out in Punns and Quibbles.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Roughly speaking, the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution and custom spell it out, for him as well ...as for us. His wife has no such luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The world is made by man--for man alone. I, who have lived as a man among men, realize it. I, who have talked with men as a man, k...now it. And whatever man may say about "the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," they know that nothing rules men but their desires and there is no ruler in this world but sex.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who... will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »