
“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”
Source: The Information
Commencement address at University of Iowa.
Commencement address, University of Iowa http://www.bartleby.com/63/48/2748.html, Time (June 19, 1965)
“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”
Source: The Information
"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.
"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow (1955), Speaker's Book of Epigrams and Witticisms
Misattributed
“Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.”
Lessons : An Autobiography (1986)
Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 87
http://www.paulglover.org/8709.html (“What’s Next for Ithaca?”), The Grapevine, cover story, 1987-09-15
Context: “Growth is a good thing, up to about seven feet tall, then it starts to get inconvenient. People eight feet tall bang their heads, their backs ache, their circulation slows, they spend more for food and clothes, and when they fall it really hurts. Who can they make love to? ---The same is true of cities. After a certain size they get more frustrating than exciting: People collide and anger turns to crime. Streets become dangerous, housing costs more, tax rates rise, schools teach less, structures dwarf people, air smells stale, water fouls and traffic slows no matter how wide the roads.”