It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, followi...ng one's nose, taking shortcuts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Would you--be good enough--" Alice panted out, after running a little further, "to stop a minute--just to get--one's breath again...?" "I'm good enough," the King said, "only I'm not strong enough. You see, a minute goes by so fearfully quick. You might as well try to stop a Bandersnatch!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You must ...allow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In states of perplexity men will rub their chins with their hand, or tug at the lobes of their ears, or rub their foreheads or che...eks or back of the neck. Women have very different gestures in such states. They will either put a finger on their lower front teeth with the mouth slightly open or pose a finger under the chin. Other masculine gestures in states of perplexity are: rubbing one's nose, placing the flexed fingers over the mouth, rubbing the side of the neck, rubbing the infraorbital part of the face, rubbing the closed eyes, and picking the nose. These are all masculine gestures; so is rubbing the back of the hand or the front of the thigh, and pursing of the lips.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As for the peasant populations of a great part of the world, they aren't so much anxious as hungry. They aren't anxious about whet...her they will get a salary raise, or which of the three colleges of their choice they will be admitted to, or whether to buy a Ford or Cadillac, or whether the kind of TV set they want is too expensive. They are hungry, cold and, in many parts of the world, they dread that local warfare, bandits, political coups may endanger their homes, their meager livelihoods and their lives. But surely they are not anxious. For anxiety, as we have come to use it to describe our characteristic state of mind, can be contrasted with the active fear of hunger, loss, violence and death. Anxiety is the appropriate emotion when the immediate personal terror--of a volcano, an arrow, the sorcerer's spell, a stab in the back and other calamities, all directed against one's self--disappears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What one really wants is youth, and what one really loses is years. Life becomes at last a mere piece of acting. One goes on by ha...bit, playing more or less clumsily that one is still alive. It is ludicrous and at times humiliating, but there is a certain style in it which youth has not. We become all, more or less, gentlemen; we are ancien régime; we learn to smile while gout racks us.... We get out of bed in the morning all broken up, without nerves, color or temper, and by noon we are joking with young women about the play. One lives in constant company with diseased hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs; one shakes hands with certain death at closer embrace every day; one sees paralysis in every feature and feels it in every muscle; all one's functions relax their action day by day; and, what is worse, one's grasp on the interests of life relaxes with the physical relaxation; and, through it all, we improve; our manners acquire refinement; our sympathies grow wider; our youthful self-consciousness disappears; very ordinary men and women are found to have charm; our appreciations have weight; we should almost get to respect ourselves if we knew of anything human to respect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purity of today will invest us like a breeze, Only be hard, spare, ironical: something one can... Tip one's hat to and still get some use out of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »