Progress is a tension between the notion of perfection and the notion that striving, not finding, is important.
Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.
democracy always makes for materialism, because the only kind of equality that you can guarantee to a whole people is, broadly speaking, physical.
Culture' means a long receptivity to things of the mind and the spirit.
. . . the more we recruit from immigrants who bring no personal traditions with them, the more America is going to ignore the things of the spirit. No one whose consuming desire is either for food or for motor-cars is going to care about culture, or even know what it is.
Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism.
All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.
Children grow rapidly, forget the centuries-long embrace from their parents, which to them lasted but seconds. Children become adults, live far from their parents, live their own houses, learn ways of their own, suffer pain, grow old. Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.
I have reached a state in life where I can buy a whole house full of chairs and can bump into them until they are black and blue
Both of them can get it. They can line up. I'll fight both of them in one night, and I bet it won't go 12 rounds.
The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!