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It Is One Of The Sublime Provincialities Of New York That Its Inhabitants Lap Up Trivial Gossip About Essential Nobodies They've Never Set Eyes On, While Continuing To Boast That They Could Live Somewhere For Twenty Years Without So Much As Exchanging Pleasantries With Their Neighbors Across The Hall.

-Louis Kronenberger

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It Is One Of

Louis Kronenberger

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It Is One Of The Sublime Provincialities Of New York That Its Inhabitants Lap Up Trivial Gossip About Essential Nobodies They've Never Set Eyes On, While Continuing To Boast That They Could Live Somewhere For Twenty Years Without So Much As Exchanging Pleasantries With Their Neighbors Across The Hall.

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True Individualists Tend To Be Quite Unobservant; It Is The Snob, The Would Be Sophisticate, The Frightened Conformist, Who Keeps A Fascinated Or Worried Eye On What Is In The Wind.

Along With Being Forever On The Move, One Is Forever In A Hurry, Leaving Things Inadvertently Behind-friend Or Fishing Tackle, Old Raincoat Or Old Allegiance.

One Of The Misfortunes Of Our Time Is That In Getting Rid Of False Shame, We Have Killed Off So Much Real Shame As Well.

With Intellectuals, Moral Thought Is Often Less A Tonic That Quickens Ethical Action Than A Narcotic That Deadens It.

Has There Ever Been An Age So Rife With Neurotic Sensibility, With That State Of Near Shudders, Or Near Hysteria, Or Near Nausea, Much Of It Induced By Trifles, Which Used To Belong To People Who Were At Once Ill-adjusted And Over-civilized?

Nominally A Great Age Of Scientific Inquiry, Ours Has Become An Age Of Superstition About The Infallibility Of Science; Of Almost Mystical Faith In Its Non-mystical Methods; Above All-which Perhaps Most Explains The Expert's Sovereignty-of External Verities; Of Traffic-cop Morality And Rabbit-test Truth.

Highly Educated Bores Are By Far The Worst; They Know So Much, In Such Fiendish Detail, To Be Boring About.

The Essence Of The Expert Is That His Field Shall Be Very Special And Narrow: One Of The Ways In Which He Inspires Confidence Is To Rigidly Limit Himself To The Little Toe; He Would Scarcely Venture An Off-the-record Opinion On An Infected Little Finger.

Educated People Do Indeed Speak The Same Languages; Cultivated Ones Need Not Speak At All.

The Technique Of Winning Is So Shoddy, The Terms Of Winning Are So Ignoble, The Tenure Of Winning Is So Brief; And The Specter Of The Has-been-a Shameful Rather Than A Pitiable Sight Today-brings A Sudden Chill Even To Our Sunlit Moments.

We Might Define An Eccentric As A Man Who Is A Law Unto Himself, And A Crank As One Who, Having Determined What The Law Is, Insists On Laying It Down To Others.

Temperament, Like Liberty, Is Important Despite How Many Crimes Are Committed In Its Name.

The Life Of Sense Begins By Assuming That We Can Only Fitfully Live The Life Of Reason.

Someone Who Gossips Well Has A Reputation For Being Good Company Or Even A Wit, Never For Being A Gossip.

It Is One Of The Sublime Provincialities Of New York That Its Inhabitants Lap Up Trivial Gossip About Essential Nobodies They've Never Set Eyes On, While Continuing To Boast That They Could Live Somewhere For Twenty Years Without So Much As Exchanging Pleasantries With Their Neighbors Across The Hall.

The Thrust Of Ambition Is, And Always Has Been, Great, But Among The Bright-eyed It Had Once A More Adventurous And Individualistic Air, A Much More Bracing Rivalry.

There Seems To Be A Terrible Misunderstanding On The Part Of A Great Many People To The Effect That When You Cease To Believe You May Cease To Behave.

The Materialistic Idealism That Governs American Life, That On The One Hand Makes A Chariot Of Every Grocery Wagon, And On The Other A Mere Hitching Post Of Every Star, Lets Every Man Lead A Very Enticing Double Life.

One Must Never Judge The Writer By The Man; But One May Fairly Judge The Man By The Writer.

A Great Maxim Of Personal Responsibility And Mature Achievement: "do It Yourself" Is Now The Enthroned Cliche For Being Occupied With Nonessentials.

This Is, I Think, Very Much The Age Of Anxiety, The Age Of The Neurosis, Because Along With So Much That Weighs On Our Minds There Is Perhaps Even More That Grates On Our Nerves.

The American Way Is So Restlessly Creative As To Be Essentially Destructive; The American Way Is To Carry Common Sense Itself Almost To The Point Of Madness.

It Is The Gossip Columnist's Business To Write About What Is None Of His Business.

The Moving Van Is A Symbol Of More Than Our Restlessness, It Is The Most Conclusive Evidence Possible Of Our Progress.

Old Age Is An Excellent Time For Outrage. My Goal Is To Say Or Do At Least One Outrageous Thing Every Week.

In The History Of Thought And Culture The Dark Nights Have Perhaps In Some Ways Cost Mankind Less Grief Than The False Dawns, The Prison Houses In Which Hope Persists Less Grief Than The Promised Lands Where Hope Expires.

Ours Is The Country Where, In Order To Sell Your Product, You Don't So Much Point Out Its Merits As You First Work Like Hell To Sell Yourself.

Today's Competitiveness, So Much Imposed From Without, Is Exhausting, Not Exhilarating; Is Unending-a Part Of One's Social Life, One's Solitude, One's Sleep, One's Sleeplessness.

Prig And Philistine, Ph.d. And C.p.a., Despot Of English 218c And Big Shot Of The Kiwanis Club-how Much, At Bottom, They Both Hate Art, And How Hard It Is To Know Which Of Them Hates It The More.

In An Automobile Civilization, Which Was One Of Constant Motion And Activity, There Was Almost No Time To Think; In A Television One, There Is Small Desire.

From The Failure Of The Humanist Tradition To Participate Fully Or To Act Decisively, Civilizations May Perhaps Crumble Or Perish At The Hands Of Barbarians. But Unless The Humanist Tradition Itself In Some Form Survives, There Can Really Be No Civilization At All.

The Englishman Wants To Be Recognized As A Gentleman, Or As Some Other Suitable Species Of Human Being; The American Wants To Be Considered A Good Guy.

Ours Must Be The First Age Whose Great Goal, On A Nonmaterial Plane, Is Not Fulfillment But Adjustment; And Perhaps Just Such A Goal Has Served As Maladjustment's Weapon.

The Truly Ambitious Are Always As Busy On The Landings As They Are Breathless On The Stairs.

Privacy Was In Sufficient Danger Before Tv Appeared, And Tv Has Given It Its Death Blow.

One Of The Saddest Things About Conformity Is The Ghastly Sort Of Non-conformity It Breeds; The Noisy Protesting, The Aggressive Rebelliousness, The Rigid Counter-fetishism.

Many People Today Don't Want Honest Answers Insofar As Honest Means Unpleasant Or Disturbing, They Want A Soft Answer That Turneth Away Anxiety.

On Any Morning These Days Whole Segments Of The Population Wake Up To Find Themselves Famous, While, To Keep Matters Shipshape, Whole Contingents Of Celebrities Wake Up To Find Themselves Forgotten.

Having Disciples Is In The End Like Having Children, Only Not With Love But With Self-love Preeminent.

Conformity May Not Always Reign In The Prosperous Bourgeois Suburb, But It Ultimately Always Governs.

Humor Simultaneously Wounds And Heals, Indicts And Pardons, Diminishes And Enlarges; It Constitutes Inner Growth At The Expense Of Outer Gain, And Those Who Possess And Honestly Practice It Make Themselves More Through A Willingness To Make Themselves Less.

We Are Neurotically Haunted Today By The Imminence, And By The Ignominy, Of Failure. We Know At How Frightening A Cost One Succeeds: To Fail Is Something Too Awful To Think About.

If It Is The Great Delusion Of Moralists To Suppose That All Previous Ages Were Less Sinful Than Their Own, Then It Is The Great Delusion Of Intellectuals To Suppose That All Previous Ages Were Less Sick.

London ... Remains A Man's City Where New York Is Chiefly A Woman's. London Has Whole Streets That Cater To Men's Wants. It Has Its Great Solid Phalanx Of Fortress Clubs.

He Was The Mightiest Of Puritans No Less Than Of Philistines Who First Insisted That Beauty Is Only Skin Deep.

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