Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials.
The modern idea of testing a reader's "comprehension," as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?
When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own...
Men are like busses. I mean, you wait for ages and ages, and when one does finally come along you can't get on. And that bit about them coming in threes, well, that's just a myth.
He’s a young man, my own age or a little older, which is young for a man although not for a woman, as at my age a woman is an old maid but a man is not an old bachelor until he’s fifty, and even then there’s still hope for the ladies, as Mary W...
It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed.
Being constantly the hub of a network of potential interruptions provides the excitement and importance of crisis management. As well as the false sense of efficiency in multitasking, there is the false sense of urgency in multi-interrupt processing.
Archer had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage. It was less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat May exactly as all his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice the theories with which his untrammelle...
My mother was tickled and I think kind of proud when my father got hit on my an attractive middle-aged Asian lady who hadn't noticed he was with his family. He was certainly pleased about it.
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the rig...
The answer of on the question, 'Which is the most perfect popular govemment,' has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, 'That,' says he, 'where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is ...
It’s [old age] not a surprise, we knew it was coming – make the most of it. So you may not be as fast on your feet, and the image in your mirror may be a little disappointing, but if you are still functioning and not in pain, gratitude should be ...
When we attempt to clear up the mess others have made, or when we love the unlovely, we demonstrate the kind of weirdness God likes. We give the lie to the evolutionary survival of the fittest maxim...
People ask me what I am politically and I've previously offered this equation: I became a conservative by being around liberals. And I became a libertarian after being around conservatives.
My double drags his coffin, humble slave, I, at least, am real, though changed to flesh. Far-off, I build me a church no hand can shape ("Winter Sonnets: III")
Confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we’ve chosen to have things. Today it is a luxury to read what Socrates said, not because the books are expensive, but because our time is scarce.
To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck--paddling, paddling, paddling.
I’ll bet you make love like an orca whale sings opera. How do you make love? Bjork Orca asked me. Like an orca whale sings opera, only with more wetness, more shattered glass, and less boredom.
Love is a bronze statue sinking in quicksand. But if I hand you a lasso, will you try to save the statue—or use the lasso to hang yourself? If you need me, I’ll be here to kick the chair out from under your feet.
I trained for months to be a boxer. Not Mike Tyson style, but more like Fed Ex. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Well, I’m not really a lover, but I am slightly more romantic than I am brave, and I’m not at all courageous.
I wake up to write stuff down all night. Useful things like this: To more efficiently make love nocturnally, I must combine the best characteristics of bats, bears, and my Uncle Norman who disappeared in the mountains in ’94.
