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Brisbane, Arthur, 1864-1936

"Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers"

Then,
if you want the crowd to see how fine you are, come back to it
and boss it if it will let you.
Constant craving for indiscriminate company is a sure sign of
mental weakness.
Schopenhauer--a sour genius, BUT a genius--speaks contemptuously
of the negroes herded in small rooms unable to get "enough of one
another's snub-nose company." ----
If you enter a village or small town and want to find the man or
youth of ability, do you look for him leaning over the village
pool table, sitting on the grocery store boxes, lounging in the
smelly tavern with other vacant minds?
Certainly not. You find him at work, and you find him by
himself.
Think how public institutions dwarf the brains and souls of
unhappy children condemned to live in them. No chance there for
individual, separate development. Millions of children have
grown up in such places millions of sad nonentities. ----
Here is what Goethe says:
"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, doch ein Charakter in
dem Strome der Welt." (Talent is developed in solitude, character
in the rush of the world.)
You wonder why so much ability comes from the country--why a
Lincoln comes from the backwoods while you, flourishing in a
great city, can barely keep your place as a typewriter.


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