Americans living in England are remarkably consistent in their reactions to the English. Most of them are hurt and puzzled because... they were brought up on American neighboring patterns and don't interpret the English ones correctly. In England propinquity means nothing. The fact that you live next door to a family does not entitle you to visit, borrow from, or socialize with them, or your children to play with theirs.... To the best of my knowledge, those who have tried to relate to the English purely on the basis of propinquity seldom if ever succeed. They may get to know and even like their neighbors, but it won't be because they live next door, because English relationships are patterned not according to space but according to social status.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essentially and next door to an idiot, ...for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The flattering, if arbitrary, label, First Lady of the Theatre, takes its toll. The demands are great, not only in energy but even...tually in dramatic focus. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a star to occupy an inch of space without bursting seams, cramping everyone else's style and unbalancing a play. No matter how self-effacing a famous player may be, he makes an entrance as a casual neighbor and the audience interest shifts to the house next door.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Other people--grandparents, sisters and brothers, the mother's best friend, the next-door neighbor--get to be familiar to the baby.... If the mother communicates her trust in these people, the baby will regard them as delicious novelties. Anybody the mother trusts whom the baby sees often enough partakes a bit of the presence of the mother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To deny the need for comprehensive child care policies is to deny a reality--that there's been a revolution in American life. Gran...dma doesn't live next door anymore, Mom doesn't work just because she'd like a few bucks for the sugar bowl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mi...leage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting. And yet the answer is really very simple. Our bodies are mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbor's 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage," at a volume capable of disintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although the same exemplary figures are found in both and equally miraculous events occur in both, there is a crucial difference i...n the way these are communicated. Put simply, the dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me. The reason is not so much that what takes place is miraculous, but that it is described as such. By contrast, although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you or me or the person next door when out on a walk in the woods. Even the most remarkable encounters are related in casual, everyday ways in fairy tales.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I see two dingy little rooms with "FOR LADIES" swinging over one and "FOR COLORED PEOPLE" over the other; while wondering under wh...ich head I come, I notice a little way off the only hotel proprietor of the place whittling a pine stick as he sits with one leg thrown across an empty goods box; and as my eye falls on a sample room next door which seems to be driving the only wide-awake and popular business of the commonwealth, I cannot help ejaculating under my breath, "What a field for the missionary woman."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbour and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It ...is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »