Americans are genuinely and profoundly anti-intellectual. They are especially so in their pleasure-seeking, which is epically banal. Jesse Ball More Quotes by Jesse Ball More Quotes From Jesse Ball First, he says, you have to go out into the world. This is not a simple matter of going outside one's door. No, that is simply going out. That's what one does when one is on the way to the store to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of wine. When one goes out into the world, one is shedding preconceptions of past paths and ideas of past paths, and trying to move freely through an unsubstantiated and new geography. Jesse Ball wine simple moving Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don't you? Jesse Ball true-you believe If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all. Jesse Ball important whole ifs I like small books. I like durable books. I like plain books. I like small type and thin pages. Jesse Ball type pages book I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor. Jesse Ball elephants water needs Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one reason or another. Jesse Ball sunday self reason Three things are required of you: the wishes you made when you first knew the breadth of this life; the contract you signed when you decided your wishes were not true or possible; and the exacting of the punishment you agreed to when you knew you would break the contract of your life. Jesse Ball punishment three wish I want to say less, and it's easier to say less. Jesse Ball easier want I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is. Jesse Ball doe trying believe We tire differently if we love or love not. Jesse Ball tire ifs That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse! Jesse Ball false-hope certainty would-be I'm confused, and brilliant books help me to be less so. Jesse Ball confused helping book The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past. Jesse Ball voice men past One can't say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards. I suppose if you a playing go or shogi, then such a thing might be helpful, but that is not life. Jesse Ball pairs events might It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have. Jesse Ball enterprise humans heart I begin with an image of some sort, just as if you saw something out of a window, and then went to the window to see what it was. Jesse Ball saws ifs window …There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost. " "What goes into these decisions? What tiny factors, invisible, in the jutting edges of personality and circumstance, contribute to this inevitability? Jesse Ball cost decision personality This is what we bear, I thought, the nearness of other lives. Jesse Ball bears In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another. Jesse Ball trying long way I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something. Jesse Ball concepts flesh ideas
