A Quote by Lord Chesterfield
Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
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I'd always thought that my awkwardness was a thin veil disguising the real me. The me that was funny and could write songs that touched people. The me that would one day find some beautiful, intelligent boy who'd recognize me as his soul mate. The me who was secretly pretty and stylish if only someone would lift the veil and see. But I was beginning to suspect that underneath the awkwardness there was just more awkwardness and not much else. And that would explain why I stood in a room full of people and felt like the loneliest girl in the world.
Suffering, once accepted, loses its edge, for the terror of it lessens, and what remains is generally far more manageable than we had imagined.
I feel like I'm constantly trying to avoid awkwardness. I always try to pretend that the awkwardness doesn't exist, and then it just becomes more awkward.
Ridicule more often settles things more thoroughly and better than acrimony.
Ridicule is often employed with more power and success than severity.
I've always thought that one of the least successful encounters is meeting a writer one admires. For one thing, writers are generally much kinder, more empathetic, more generous people on the page than they are in person.
He who has a slight disadvantage plays more attentively, inventively and more boldly than his antagonist who either takes it easy or aspires after too much. Thus a slight disadvantage is very frequently seen to convert into a good, solid advantage.
Natural dignity of mind or manners can never be concealed; it ever commands our respect: assumed dignity, or importance, excites our ridicule and contempt.
In stating as fully as I could how things really were, it was often very difficult and I wrote awkwardly and the awkwardness is what they called my style. All mistakes and awkwardness are easy to see, and they called it style.
The life of the mind is always more interesting than the real. The idea is often more interesting than the actual.
Women are often expected to be more amiable or more pleasing or more submissive than men generally.
Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not - and more often than liberals - about most of the important issues of the day.
Sincere thought, real free thought, ready, in the name of superhuman authority or of humble common sense, to question the basis of what is officially taught and generally accepted, is less and less likely to thrive. It is, we repeat, by far easier to enslave a literate people than an illiterate one, strange as this may seem at first sight. And the enslavement is more likely to be lasting.
I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work. Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the center of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive.
I always thought, I can't waste time, I have to do work. I also thought that I was slower than other people, that I had to concentrate more. I always thought, I'm not brilliant, I have to work. That was something I embedded in myself very early: I have to go home and write. But did I get any more work done than people like Frank O'Hara, who were always going to parties? Probably not.
Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
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