Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-a...gain regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer ... its anti-intellectualism ... its puerile hymns ... and its faith-healing ... are made to order for King Kid America.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain pueril...e vanity more like senility than anything.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The idea that leisure is of value in itself is only conditionally true.... The average man simply spends his leisure as a dog spen...ds it. His recreations are all puerile, and the time supposed to benefit him really only stupefies him.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 »
Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, ...in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly t...ermed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »