For it has to be remembered that crime and poverty had none of the attraction for the Elizabethans that they have for us. They had none of our modern shame of book learning; none of our belief that to be born the son of a butcher is a blessing and to be unable to read a virtue; no fancy that what we call “life” and “reality” are somehow connected with ignorance and brutality; nor, indeed, any equivalent for these two words at all.
Where Bernard Shaw denounces the Idle Rich, an American Socialist might well denounce the Active Rich, who work without the compulsion of necessity, who encumber positions that might be filled by competent persons in need of earning their livelihood, who do not understand the duties of idleness.
Man changes only on the surface. We often run to doubtful and distant documents for explanations of events in the ancient world, when it would suffice to look around us to understand them.
When someone asked Sisinnius why he, a bishop, bathed twice a day, he replied, “Because it’s not convenient to bathe three times.”
I hear they’re going to put what they call a morality clause in contracts. They’ve appointed a committee to see about it. Don’t suppose they’ll take any action until the committee finds out what morality means. And if any of them guys asks me to sign a contract with that kind of a gewgaw in it, I’m going to tell him, “Well, you sign it yourself first.”
Not to know what was done ere we were born,
Is to live Children still.
What good is purity of speech if it does not lead to understanding in the hearer? There is no use at all in speaking if the people we are speaking for do not understand us. Whoever teaches, therefore, will avoid all words that do not teach. And if instead of them he can find words that are both pure and intelligible, he will pick those first. If, however, he cannot, either because there are no such words, or because they do not at the time occur to him, he will use words that are not quite pure, as long as the meaning of his thought is conveyed and understood in its integrity.