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Quotes from Private Lives in the Imperial City — John Leonard

1939–2008 United States

← All quotes by John Leonard

15 quotes

When the state murders, it assumes an authority I refuse to concede: the authority of perfect knowledge in final things.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

In our brave new world, blushing is a form of nostalgia.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

One advantage of remorse is that it sets the stage for consolation.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

A bohemian imitates the manners of the class below him.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Granted, religion is wishful thinking, but there is no other kind of thinking.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Every fall I imagine once again that something wonderful will happen at a party. This is like imagining that the telephone book will prove to be a wonderful novel.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Monotheism was a terrible idea, leading directly to Lenin.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

You can't invent yourself as you maunder on. Your fabrications aren't going to impress the blood test, the urinalysis or the chest X-ray. Science is not amused.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

You marry to be worthy of a gift, and want to say so out loud, but without shouting. One doesn't shout a prayer. Marriage is one of the few ceremonies left to us about which it is impossible — or at least self-demeaning — to be cynical.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

We are getting to be of an age when it is difficult to grow new friends; we haven't the energy, the time to cultivate; each one gone is a permanent impoverishment.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

In God's body shop, each of us was customized. But science came along to substitute statistical inference for free will. We are now a tribe of likelihoods.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Suppose, deep down, you suspect that you are dull, and your public works are a form of vengeance. You talk a good poem, and think by numbers. Once upon a time, you were interesting; then Mother died and you had to give it up.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Somewhere in the Bill of Rights is a Pig Amendment; our freedom to stuff ourselves cannot be abridged. Having so stuffed, we demand a technological solution to the fat problem. Give me cyclamates, or give me death! This is not only immoral; it is also boring.

Private Lives in the Imperial City (1979)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Leonard (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.