People From New York City

"If only the specialist is to be allowed access to these books, on the ground that it is impossible to understand them without "scholarship," ... then we shall be compelled to shut out the majority of mankind from some of the finest creations of the human mind. This is aristocracy with a vengeance."

"We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures and listening to poor music. We urge them to look at as many good pictures and hear as much good music as they can, convinced that this is the way in which they will come to understand and appreciate art and music."

"As Whitehead has said "If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it is cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.""

"There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch."

"If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible ... it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books."

"Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books come out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements for success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people."

"In education ... whenever a proposal is made that looks toward increased intellectual effort on the part of students, professors will always say that the students cannot so the work. My observation leads me to think that what this usually means is that the professors cannot or will not do the work ... When, in spite of the opposition of the professors, the change is introduced, the students, in my experience, have always responded nobly."

"There appears to be an innate human tendency to underestimate the capacity of those who do not belong to "our" group. Those who do not share our background cannot have our ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward."

"The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition of every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free."

"The products of American high schools are illiterate; and a degree from a famous college or university is no guarantee that the graduate is in any better case. One of the most remarkable features of American society is that the difference between the "uneducated" and the "educated" is so slight."

"I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie."

"(Which classic novel did you recently read for the first time?) “The Age of Innocence,” by Edith Wharton. I’d read “Ethan Frome” in high school, but somehow missed this one. It’s a masterpiece. Despite being almost a hundred years old, it still speaks powerfully on the assumptions we make about each other, and our human failures to communicate our needs and desires."

"When the world is too much, I love to read thrillers and romance novels. I just want to lose myself in something either intriguing or ludicrously romantic. For inspiration, I go back to my favorite books, the ones I wish I had written. This seems sufficiently vague given that I haven’t listed any titles. My No. 1 go-to book is The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton."

"'The Age of Innocence is so poetic and has stuck to me years after reading it in school."

"Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, Old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death."

"Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?"

"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."

"To James's intimates, however, these elaborate hesitancies, far from being an obstacle, were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet."

"I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it."

"In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."

"There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow."

"Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive."

"The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else."

"It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them."

"In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once."

"I can't love you unless I give you up."

"It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes."

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

"Nancy, the most beautiful town in France, has never been as beautiful as now. (...) The last time I looked out on the great architectural setting of the Place Stanislas was on a hot July evening, the evening of the National Fête. The square and the avenues leading to it swarmed with people, and as darkness fell the balanced lines of arches and palaces sprang out in many coloured light. Garlands of lamps looped the arcades leading into the Place de la Carrière, peacock-coloured fires flared from the Arch of Triumph, long curves of radiance beat like wings over the thickets of the park, the sculptures of the fountains, the brown-and-gold foliation of Jean Lamour's great gates; and under this roofing of light was the murmur of a happy crowd carelessly celebrating the tradition of half-forgotten victories."

"When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say."

"I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views."

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision."

"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."

"How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?"

"Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone."

"After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist — or exist in a less measure."

"No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity."

"He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced."

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."

"A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue."

"It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues."

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it."

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain — No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions."

"You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and dimension all its own."

"Reuven, as you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them— "ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is."

"I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul!""

"Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much, if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?...I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing; but the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing; but the man who lives the span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning- that, I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here."

"It was senseless, as— I held my breath, feeling myself shiver with fear— as Billy's blindness was senseless."

"It is never pleasant to be a buffer, Reuven."