Quotes
It used to be said that by a certain age a man had the face that he deserved. Nowadays, he has the face he can afford.
And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look, and feel, like shit.
We kept nearly bumping into each other, unavoidably. I wished we could stop avoiding each other long enough to agree to avoid each other properly.
Bujak spoke of Einstein as if he were God's literary critic, God being a poet. I, more stolidly, tend to suspect that God is a novelist — a garrulous and deeply unwholesome one too.
Methods Used
1. Marxist: You decide you're the vanguard of the proletariat and then you can do whatever you want because history will back you up.
2. Stoic: Stay very calm.
3. Positivist: Yes, I'm positive I want to rob this bank.
p. 97
You've got to try everything once, except those things you don't like, or that involve a lot of effort and getting up early.
p. 205
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
May faulty logic undermine your entire philosophy!
Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue, which consisted in making inquiries that could not be answered, and were not worth making (Chapter XII)
Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
The footman, recognizing instantly the boundless bad manners of the well-bred, backed away quickly. (p. 262)
Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble. (p. 162)
It is commonly said that no man was ever converted by argument, but there is a single one which will make any Laodicean in England, let him be once love-sick, wear prayer-books and become a zealous Episcopalian – the argument that his sweetheart can be seen from his pew.
