One Of The Misfortunes Of Our Time

It Is One Of The Sublime Provincialities Of New York That Its Inhabitants Lap Up Trivial Gossip About Essential Nobodies They've Never Set Eyes On, While Continuing To Boast That They Could Live Somewhere For Twenty Years Without So Much As Exchanging Pleasantries With Their Neighbors Across The Hall.

One Of The Saddest Things About Conformity Is The Ghastly Sort Of Non-conformity It Breeds; The Noisy Protesting, The Aggressive Rebelliousness, The Rigid Counter-fetishism.

Has There Ever Been An Age So Rife With Neurotic Sensibility, With That State Of Near Shudders, Or Near Hysteria, Or Near Nausea, Much Of It Induced By Trifles, Which Used To Belong To People Who Were At Once Ill-adjusted And Over-civilized?

True Individualists Tend To Be Quite Unobservant; It Is The Snob, The Would Be Sophisticate, The Frightened Conformist, Who Keeps A Fascinated Or Worried Eye On What Is In The Wind.

The Materialistic Idealism That Governs American Life, That On The One Hand Makes A Chariot Of Every Grocery Wagon, And On The Other A Mere Hitching Post Of Every Star, Lets Every Man Lead A Very Enticing Double Life.