Louis Kronenberger
The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.Collection: Relationship
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.Collection: Religion
Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.Collection: Age
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.Collection: Poetry
Individualism is rather like innocence; there must be something unconscious about it.
Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.
The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destination.
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.
Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about.
The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.
Many people today don't want honest answers insofar as honest means unpleasant or disturbing, They want a soft answer that turneth away anxiety.
It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.
In art there are tears that lie too deep for thought.
In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.Collection: Vices
The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't matter.Collection: Science
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.Collection: Real
Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn't everything.Collection: Money Isn't Everything
Individualism is rather like innocence: There must be something unconscious about it.Collection: Being Yourself
On a very rough-and-ready basis we might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. An eccentric puts ice cream on steak simply because he likes it; should a crank do so, he would endow the act with moral grandeur and straightaway denounce as sinners (or reactionaries) all who failed to follow suit. Cranks, at their most familiar, are a sort of peevish prophets, and it's not enough that they should be in the right; others must also be in the wrong.Collection: Men
Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.Collection: Humility
The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.Collection: Birthday
Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.Collection: Civilization
The fascinating necessarily tends to call a certain attention to itself; the interesting need not. An evening spent with a fascinating person leaves vivid memories; one spent with interesting people has merely a sort of bouquet.Collection: Memories
For young people today things move so fast there is no problem of adjustment. Before you can adjust to A, B has appeared leading C by the hand, and with D in the distance.Collection: Change
In art, there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts.Collection: Art
Life for most of us is full of steep stairs to go up and later, shaky stairs to totter down; and very early in the history of stairs must have come the invention of bannisters.Collection: Adversity
She ate so many clams that her stomach rose and fell with the tide.Collection: Food
Doubtless a good general rule for close friendships, where confidences are freely exchanged, is that what one is not informed about, one may not inquire about.Collection: Friendship
The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness.Collection: Common Sense
Coyness is a rather comically pathetic fault, a miscalculation in which, by trying to veil the ego, we let it appear stark naked.Collection: Ego
For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading.Collection: People
On any morning these days whole segments of the population wake up to find themselves famous, while, to keep matters shipshape, whole contingents of celebrities wake up to find themselves forgotten.Collection: Morning
It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.Collection: Gold
Having disciples is in the end like having children, only not with love but with self-love preeminent.Collection: Children
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.Collection: New York
Someone who gossips well has a reputation for being good company or even a wit, never for being a gossip.Collection: Gossip
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.Collection: Stars
The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress.Collection: Inspirational
One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.Collection: Writing
London ... remains a man's city where New York is chiefly a woman's. London has whole streets that cater to men's wants. It has its great solid phalanx of fortress clubs.Collection: New York
The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being; the American wants to be considered a good guy.Collection: Guy
With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.Collection: Action
The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason.Collection: Live Life
The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry.Collection: Ambition
The truly ambitious are always as busy on the landings as they are breathless on the stairs.Collection: Ambitious
We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others.Collection: Men
In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Eye
In the history of thought and culture the dark nights have perhaps in some ways cost mankind less grief than the false dawns, the prison houses in which hope persists less grief than the promised lands where hope expires.Collection: Grief