We use important words too frequently and they lose value; for instance, charm and great. An actor or musician often is proclaimed... great when we really mean he is outstanding.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some people say the business about the jolly fat person is a myth, that all of us chubbies are neurotic, sick, sad people. I disag...ree. Fat people may not be chortling all day long, but they're a hell of a lot nicer than the wizened and shriveled. Thin people turn surly, mean and hard at a young age because they never learn the value of a hot fudge sundae for easing tension. Thin people don't like gooey soft things because they themselves are neither gooey nor soft. They are crunchy and dull, like carrots. They go straight to the heart of the matter while fat people let things stay all blurry and hazy and vague, they way things actually are. Thin people want to face the truth. Fat people know there is no truth.... Thin people believe in logic. Fat people see all sides. The sides fat people see are rounded blobs, usually gray, always nebulous and truly not worth worrying about. But the thin person persists. "If you consume more calories than you burn," says one of my thin friends, "you will gain weight. It's that simple." Fat people always grin when they hear that. They know better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value f...or anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent "celibacy," by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity "backward."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we are ever to construct a feminist movement that is not based on the premise that men and women are always at war with one ano...ther, then we must be willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of complex critical responses to writing by men even if it is sexist. Clearly women can learn from writers whose work is sexist, even be inspired by it, because sexism may be simply one dimension of that work. Concurrently fiercely critiquing the sexism does not mean that one does not value the work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let man consider what he is in comparison with all existence; let him regard himself as lost in this remote corner of nature; and ...from the little cell in which he finds himself lodged, I mean the universe, let him estimate at their true value the earth, kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is a man in the infinite?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usef...ulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The product of mental labor--science--always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no r...elation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
That the world is not the embodiment of an eternal rationality can be conclusively proved by the fact that the piece of the world ...that we know--I mean our human reason--is not so very rational. And if it is not eternally and completely wise and rational, then the rest of the world will not be either; here the conclusion a minori ad majus, a parte ad totum applies, and does so with decisive force.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »