You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and... it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ordinary people think that talent must be always on its own level and that it arises every morning like the sun, rested and refres...hed, ready to draw from the same storehouse--always open, always full, always abundant--new treasures that it will heap up on those of the day before; such people are unaware that, as in the case of all mortal things, talent has its increase and decrease, and that independently of the career it takes, like everything that breathes ... it undergoes all the accidents of health, of sickness, and of the dispositions of the soul--its gaiety or its sadness.... As with our perishable flesh ... talent is obliged constantly to keep guard over itself, to combat, and to keep perpetually on the alert amid the obstacles that witness the exercise of its singular power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly, then, ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon, an...d superseded. Only remember, it is the first word.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth ma...rking, in the lifetimes of many generations; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon--the most favored alternative method.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ordinary time is "quality time" too. Everyday activities are not just necessities that keep you from serious child rearing: they a...re the best opportunities for learning you can give your child...because her chief task in her first three years is precisely to gain command of the day-to-day life you take for granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress ...in philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »