Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.
Not enough attention is paid to the negative side of fashion. Great effort is exerted to make people look smart, but somebody should face the fact that a lot of people never will be smart, and that they should be given some assistance in maintaining their fascinating dowdiness.
The people who fear humor – and they are many – are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities.
But as a skeptic I am dubious about science as about everything else, unless the scientist is himself a skeptic, and few of them are. The stench of formaldehyde may be as potent as the whiff of incense in stimulating a naturally idolatrous understanding.
Some countries you love. Some countries you hate. Canada is a country you worry about.
I have no skills with machines. I fear them, and because I cannot help attributing human qualities to them, I suspect that they hate me and will kill me if they can.
So – I confess I have been a rake at reading. I have read those things which I ought not to have read, and I have not read those things which I ought to have read, and there is no health in me – if by health you mean an inclusive and coherent knowledge of any body of great literature. I can only protest, like all rakes in their shameful senescence, that I have had a good time.
If a boy can’t have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to deal with; don’t just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations.
The gift that isn’t big enough to make a mark, but is too big to leave the possessor in peace. And so they can’t be content to be Sunday painters, or poets who write for a few friends, or composers whose handful of delicate little settings of Emily Dickinson can’t find a singer. It’s a special sort of hell.
For I was, as you have already guessed, a collaborator with Destiny, not one who put a pistol to its head and demanded particular treasures. The only thing for me to do was to keep on keeping on, to have faith in my whim, and remember that for me, as for the saints, illumination when it came would probably come from some unexpected source.
Wake up! Be yourself, not a bad copy of something else!
Sexual thrills are not all physical, and although Parlabane was an unlikely seducer, even on the intellectual plane, it was clear that his desire was, by this prolonged tickling, to bring me to an orgasm of the mind.
You can’t persuade most of the public that education and making a living aren’t the same thing.
You are still young enough to think that torment of the spirit is a splendid thing, a sign of a superior nature. But you are no longer a young man; you are a youngish middle aged man, and it is time you found out that these spiritual athletics do not lead to wisdom.
When I had to leave she kissed me on both cheeks – a thing she had never done before – and said, ‘There’s just one thing to remember; whatever happens, it does no good to be afraid.’ So I promised not to be afraid, and may even have been a fool enough to think I could keep my promise.
Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.
Of course I long for her, but in honesty I must say that I would rather long for her than have her continuously present. Travel agents assure us that ‘getting there is half the fun’; I might say with at least equal truth that longing is some of the best of loving.
Sometimes fear could be forgotten, but never for long.
Despite these afternoon misgivings and self-reproaches I clung to my notion, ill-defined though it was, that a serious study of human knowledge, or theory, or belief, if undertaken with a critical but not a cruel mind, would in the end yield some secret, some valuable permanent insight, into the nature of life and the true end of man.
His reply had that clarity, objectivity and reasonableness which is possible only to advisers who have completely missed the point.