The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a drea...m? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say "I do no...t play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn't "at all a good player, in fact I'm perfectly rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he'll give him sixp...ence. But the second time it'll only be a threepenny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he'll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that "all of our problems" come from... such goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If a man knew anything, he would sit in a corner and be modest; but he is such an ignorant peacock, that he goes bustling up and d...own, and hits on extraordinary discoveries.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
By Jesus's time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmer...s, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: "It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns", this is taken to mean: "It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You cannot tell a man that he is a lowbrow any more than you can tell a woman that her clothes are in bad taste, but a highbrow do...es not mind being called a highbrow. He has worked hard, read widely, traveled far, and listened attentively in order to satisfy his curiosity and establish his squatters' rights in this little corner of intellectualism, and he does not care who knows it. And this is true of both kinds of highbrow--the militant, or crusader, type and the passive, or dilettante type. These types in general live happily together; the militant highbrow carries the torch of culture, the passive highbrow reads by its light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possib...le day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably--why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work--for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inani...mate fear. You become the very soul of anaesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »