I guess some things really never do change.
The studious class are their own victims: they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption,—pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them, and see what conceits they entertain,—they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic,” Representative Men (1850).
This is why Buckley said he's rather be ruled by the first one hundred names in the Boston Telephone Directory rather than the faculty of Harvard.
Posted by: Crazy Chester | Saturday, November 13, 2004 at 08:14 PM