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There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, read more
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.
If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own read more
If you hate something thoroughly without knowing why, you can be sure there is something of it in your own nature.
Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, read more
Whence come these hatreds...? They are an expression of a desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt and other shortcomings of the self. Self-contempt is here transmuted into hatred of others- and there is a most determined and persistent effort to mask this switch.
Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of read more
Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.
Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
Every animal is sad after coitus except the human female and the rooster.
Every animal is sad after coitus except the human female and the rooster.
When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to read more
When a gifted team dedicates itself to unselfish trust and combines instinct with boldness and effort, it is ready to climb.
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.
Love and envy make a man pine, which other affections do not, because they are not so continual.