Louis Kronenberger Quotes - Page 3

Someone who gossips well has a reputation for being good company or even a wit, never for being a gossip.

Along with being forever on the move, one is forever in a hurry, leaving things inadvertently behind-friend or fishing tackle, old raincoat or old allegiance.

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.

Conformity may not always reign in the prosperous bourgeois suburb, but it ultimately always governs.

The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments.

Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.

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.

One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.

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.

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

The life of sense begins by assuming that we can only fitfully live the life of reason.

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.

The truly ambitious are always as busy on the landings as they are breathless on the stairs.

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.

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.

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.