"We take our bearings, daily, from others...." - Quote by John Updike

“School is where you go between when your parents can't take you and industry can't take you.”

“A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.”

“Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books.”

“The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.”

“Young people nowadays love luxury; they have bad manners and contempt for authority. They show disrespect for old people... contradict their parents, talk constantly in front of company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

“Are you not scared by seeing that the gypsies are more attractive to us than the apostles?”

“There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.”

“Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious.”

“Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.”