Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord wit...h major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cold eyes ... steel grey, rather small, not unpleasant in good-humour, diabolic in a passion, but worst when a little suspicious; ...then they watch you as though you were a young rattle-snake, to be killed when convenient.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas. Its hard absolute opt...imism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from which a philosophical mind should be free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the most profitable lie, the course of events presently lays a destructive tax; whilst frankness invites frankness, puts the pa...rties on a convenient footing, and makes their business a friendship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Diddy-Wah-Diddy ... is a place of no work and no worry for man or beast. The road to it is so crooked that a mule pulling a load o...f fodder can eat off the back of the wagon as he plods along. All curbstones are chairs, and all food is already cooked. Baked chickens and sweet potato pies, with convenient knives and forks, drift along crying, 'Eat me! Eat me!'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In spite of the convenient textbook criteria that specialists set forth, the distinction between the madman and the jealous man is... a difficult one. The madman, like the man in love, the jealous man, or the man prey to any overwhelming passion, is a "patient," that is, a passive agent in the grip of a force that seems to be outside himself. Madman and passionate man are both tossed in piteous agitation, immersed in delirium, or plunged into unwholesome reveries. Both derive the greatest harm from an inalterable incapacity to exert self-control. We know too little of the organic determinants of pathologic mental states, but I would wager that when these become clarified, the disturbance will be shown to be the same in paranoia and in the fits of jealousy. Where does jealousy end and paranoia begin?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to m...odernisation and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable.... What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy ... when left to itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called "facts." They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain. Who do...es not know fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or two that they lead after them into decent company like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generalization, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this table.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid sha...wl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent. I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symbol--and the wild waters are upon us now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »