If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and... foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper?... I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it's tobacco, then let it ...be tobacco.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... tobacco kills 52,000 people a year from lung cancer, and there's no telling how many lives have been ruined through drinking. ...But to my knowledge, no one has ever died of a blow job.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I change, and so do women too; But I reflect--which women seldom do.... Tobacco is a filthy weed, That from the devil doth proceed; That drains your purse, that burns your clothes, That makes a chimney of your nose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[On Harvard President Charles William Eliot's lamentation that the average Harvard graduate had fewer than two children:] That is ...quite enough. Harvard graduates do not always make the best fathers. Why should we be agitated over the too small families of the rich when there are so many children of the poor that are not cared for? The rich should make it their duty to raise up these children to a higher standard.... Men of the world hate to give up their tobacco, liquor, sports, clubs, their luxurious habits, their freedom from responsibility. They prefer to flock together and so women are compelled to do the same. President Eliot talks as though the young women were sitting around anxiously and aimlessly waiting for the graduates to come and get them. He would find, if he should make the proper investigation, that a class of women is being developed who are demanding a higher standard of morals in men than did those of past generations, and if they cannot get husbands who reach this standard they are making very satisfactory careers for themselves outside of marriage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Chief Defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of String.... At last he swallowed some which tied Itself in ugly Knots inside.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune seventy times in succession,... because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A "snapshot" feature in USA Today listed the five greatest concerns parents and teachers had about children in the '50s: talking o...ut of turn, chewing gum in class, doing homework, stepping out of line, cleaning their rooms. Then it listed the five top concerns of parents today: drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, suicide and homicide, gang violence, anorexia and bulimia. We can also add AIDS, poverty, and homelessness. . . . Between my own childhood and the advent of my motherhood--one short generation--the culture had gone completely mad.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral ...and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,... tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »