There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, wit...h men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing--to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all ...thoughts. Not a select party.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Happiness lies outside yourself, is achieved through interacting with others. Self-forgetfulness should be one's goal, not self-ab...sorption. The male, capable of only the latter, makes a virtue of an irremediable fault and sets up self-absorption, not only as a good but as a Philosophical Good.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 »
We all bear traces of the starvation struggle which for so long made up the life of the race. Our very organism holds memories and... glimpses of that long life of our ancestors which still goes on among so many of our contemporaries. Nothing so deadens the sympathies and shrivels the power of enjoyment as the persistent keeping away from the great opportunities for helpfulness and a continual ignoring of the starvation struggle which makes up the life of at least half the race. To shut one's self away from that half of the race life is to shut one's self away from the most vital part of it; it is to live out but half the humanity to which we have been born heir.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Three characteristics mark all confirmed expatriates: (1) slowness on the up-take, (2) the tendency to personalize the impersonal-...-interpreting in terms of politeness or of policy what should be kept clearly in terms of ideas, (3) the tendency to orientalize one's attitude toward women.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It has been years since I have seen anyone who could even look as if he were in love. No one's face lights up any more except for ...political conversation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The system was breaking down. The one who had wandered alone past so many happenings and events began to feel, backing up along th...e primal vein that led to his center, the beginning of hiccup that would, if left to gather, explode the center to the extremities of life, the suburbs through which one makes one's way to where the country is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »