Aphorisms

The monster of postmodernism hides in the labyrinth of critical theory. Who ventures there had need of an Ariadne's clue, which can be old-fashioned inductive logic, adherence to Aristotle's Poetics,love of Samuel Johnson--it can be almost anything, but without that thread he shall perish.

Cars cannot exist without people; therefore Los Angeles has people.

Notwithstanding the beliefs of self-help groups, you cannot think happy thoughts when you're wretched. But you can think contemptuous thoughts when you're frightened.

Marvell, pessimistic about Life's pleasures, said we must "tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life." The hoyden said: "I'll take the iron gates before the pearly gates."

All worlds are dream worlds.

The why of homosexuality; there's no why and that's why.

The Roman church in the Sixteenth Century was an international system of cruelty, so the Protestants rebelled because they wanted national cruelty.

People who tell lies to induce others to tell the truth, are prevented from obtaining truths by any other method; hence their hopeless entanglement in their own deceptions.

Hitler said what he had built would last a thousand years, and he was right; it will take people that long to forget.

Pull Freedom's leg, and she will take you by the arm.

The relation of fine art to commercial art is identified with the one between a chaste maiden and a prostitute, but actually it is the one between a hare and a pack of hounds in full cry.

Reason speaks in the declarative, aggression in the interrogative mood."What did you expect?" "Is that how you park in Newport Beach?" "Where do you think you're going?" The example of Socrates down the centuries has done more harm than good.

H.L. Mencken said, "Never drink alone; it is the quickest way to become a drunkard,"but he got it backwards; being a drunkard is the quickest way to drink alone.

Etiquette is fossilized aggression;the most exquisite manners produce the most exquisite insults.

Historians now ponder whether the Holocaust was unique. Whatever answer they get will be good news. If it was unique, we needn't go through it again. If it was not, it wasn't as bad as it seemed at the time.

Every abuse is a reform in the making and vice-versa.

Half the time, success in one's career is failure in one's job.

Better that the pupils should inflict irreversible damage on the teachers than the other way around.

School-- a multitude of fish swimming one way, a multitude of students attending to one faculty, a multitude of critics stressing their likeness to each other. Apt and concise expression.

When astronomy became a science, astrology ceased to be an art.

If you cannot separate yourself from your group, don't try to solve a chess problem, run a marathon, or write criticism.

The enemy makes the homeland.

As a sawmill makes sawdust,a school makes mediocrity.

A criticism may well succeed that is made of affectations, altercations or imaginations;the criticism that must inevitably fail is the one made of generalizations.

He who rises at the end of a lecture to ask questions, makes fools of two people--if he's lucky.