The Danger That May Really

A Culture May Be Conceived As A Network Of Beliefs And Purposes In Which Any String In The Net Pulls And Is Pulled By The Others,thus Perpetually Changing The Configuration Of The Whole. If The Cultural Element Called Morals Takes On A New Shape, We Must Ask What Other Strings Have Pulled It Out Of Line. It Cannot Be One Solitary String, Nor Even The Strings Nearby, For The Network Is Three-dimensional At Least.

Of Course, Clothing Fashions Have Always Been Impractical, Except In Tahiti.

I Have Always Been - I Think Any Student Of History Almost Inevitably Is - A Cheerful Pessimist.

Of True Knowledge At Any Time, A Good Part Is Merely Convenient, Necessary Indeed To The Worker, But Not To An Understanding Of His Subject: One Can Judge A Building Without Knowing Where To Buy The Bricks; One Can Understand A Violin Sonata Without Knowing How To Score For The Instrument. The Work May In Fact Be Better Understood Without A Knowledge Of The Details Of Its Manufacture, Of Attention To These Tends To Distract From Meaning And Effect.

One Great Aim Of Revision Is To Cut Out. In The Exuberance Of Composition It Is Natural To Throw In - As One Does In Speaking - A Number Of Small Words That Add Nothing To Meaning But Keep Up The Flow And Rhythm Of Thought. In Writing, Not Only Does This Surplusage Not Add To Meaning, It Subtracts From It. Read And Revise, Reread And Revise, Keeping Reading And Revising Until Your Text Seems Adequate To Your Thought.