To be better it is first necessary to pretend to be; and objections to improvement often masquerade as objections to pretense.
Sep 042013
Identity, that spectator of what he calls himself,
That net and aggregate of energies in transient combination.
—Cunningham
To be better it is first necessary to pretend to be; and objections to improvement often masquerade as objections to pretense.
Certain qualities — skepticism, iconoclasm, willpower — are fixed in quantity, and must be apportioned wisely.
We can all be replaced, and we all are.
Elision is the mother of decision.
As sympathy broadens, it also shallows.
We all want to be happy, just not at the expense of the qualities that make us unhappy.
Personality varies like men’s fashion — a quarter-inch of width in the tie or length in the cuff.
So much to unlearn, so little time.
Hatred and envy are always sincere.
The lives of desperation that most men lead at least used to be quiet.