Man needs bread and hyacinths: one to feed the body, and one to feed the soul.
The pose of innocence is as mandatory as the ability to eat banquet food and endure the scourging of the press.
Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.
Talk about the flag or drugs or crime (never about race or class or justice) and follow the yellow brick road to the wonderful land of consensus. In place of honest argument among consenting adults the politicians substitute a lullaby for frightened children: the pretense that conflict doesn't really exist, that we have achieved the blessed state in which we no longer need politics.
A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.
America is about class. To pretend that it isn't is very ignorant. No society has ever existed without some kind of a ruling class.
The mystical nature of American consumption accounts for its joylessness. We spend a great deal of time in stores, but if we don't seem to take much pleasure in our buying, it's because we're engaged in the acts of sacrifice and self-definition. Abashed in the presence of expensive merchandise, we recognize ourselves. . . as suppliants admitted to a shrine.
I think for women especially, you need to have a plan. I need to have some other ways to generate income, so I don't have to stretch my face or lift the top of my head with surgery or something.
. . . the state of things and the dispositions of men were then such, that a man could not well tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear.
As societies continue to loosen their standards regarding what is appropriate female and male behavior, I think we are going to realize we have not only underestimated women, but also men.
Wisdom is the most important part of happiness.