"Part of life has a public orientation, but part of it does not. He has a private self that looks inward, and he should be able to feel with some distinctness the difference between public and private roles. It strikes me that those eighteenth century individuals who wrote letters to the newspapers signed “Publius” or something like that, were giving expression to this difference. When the writer appeared before the public in the common interest, he was conscious of stepping outside of his private considerations and entering into another capacity, of assuming a posture. The rest of the time he was his own man, which his thoughts and feelings reserved for himself."
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Academics from the United StatesPhilosophers from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesLiterary criticsEducators from the United States
Original Language: English
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“Individuality and Modernity,” Essays on Individuality (Philadelphia: 1958), p. 72.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Weaver
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Richard Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr (March 3, 1910—April 1, 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid-20th-century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric.
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