Why is a Classic a Classic ? - by Arnold Bennet 1909

British journalist and novelist Arnold Bennett has been described as a "mixture of puritanism, love of luxury, savage judgment, and liberal views." The Old Wives Tale (1908), a novel set in part in the Potteries district of North Staffordshire, where Bennett grew up, is generally considered his single masterpiece. "Why a Classic Is a Classic" originally appeared as the third chapter of Bennett's handbook Literary Taste: How to Form It (Hodder and Stoughton, 1909). Here he argues that a "classic" work is one that "gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature." Why a Classic Is a Classic by Arnold Bennett The large majority of our fellow-citizens care as much about literature as they care about aeroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more dream of reading it again than of reading Bishop Stubbs's Select Charters. Probably if they did read it again they would not enjoy it--not because the said novel is a whit worse now than it was ten years ago; not because their taste has improved--but because they have not had sufficient practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means of permanent pleasure. They simply don't know from one day to the next what will please them. In the face of this one may ask: Why does the great and universal fame of classical authors continue? The answer is that the fame of classical authors is entirely independent of the majority. Do you suppose that if the fame of Shakespeare depended on the man in the street it would survive a fortnight? The fame of classical authors is orginally made, and it is maintained, by a passionate few. Even when a first-class author has enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, the majority have never appreciated him so sincerely as they have appreciated second-rate men. He has always been reenforced by the ardour of the passionate few. And in the case of an author who has emerged into glory after his death the happy sequel has been due solely to the obstinate perseverance of the few. They could not leave him alone; they would not. They kept on savouring him, and talking about him, and buying him, and they generally behaved with such eager zeal, and they were so authoritative and sure of themselves, that at last the majority grew accustomed to the sound of his name and placidly agreed to the proposition that he was a genius; the majority really did not care very much either way. And it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive from one generation to another. These few are always at work. They are always rediscovering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being ignored. And, moreover, they are always working either for or against the verdicts of the majority. The majority can make a reputation, but it is too careless to maintain it. If, by accident, the passionate few agree with the majority in a particular instance, they will frequently remind the majority that such and such a reputation has been made, and the majority will idly concur: "Ah, yes. By the way, we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists." Without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall into the oblivion which is death. The passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature, that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you suppose they could prove to the man in the street that Shakespeare was a great artist? The said man would not even understand the terms they employed. But when he is told ten thousand times, and generation after generation, that Shakespeare was a great artist, the said man believes--not by reason, but by faith. And he too repeats that Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works of Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see the marvellous stage-effects which accompany King Lear or Hamlet, and comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist. All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth. And it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste should grasp it. What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature? There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. The recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature very much alive. They are for ever making new researches, for ever practising on themselves. They learn to understand themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few? This is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humour, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not really carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the first and last. It is all very well for Keats in his airy manner to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that that is all he knows or needs to know. I, for one, need to know a lot more. And I never shall know. Nobody, not even Hazlitt nor Sainte-Beuve, has ever finally explained why he thought a book beautiful. I take the first fine lines that come to hand-- The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy-- and I say that those lines are beautiful because they give me pleasure. But why? No answer! I only know that the passionate few will, broadly, agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from those lines. I am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause the majority to believe, by faith, that W. B. Yeats is a genius. The one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate few are passionate about the same things. A continuance of interest does, in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments. There is only the difference in width of interest. Some of the passionate few lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is confined to one narrow channel; they have none left over. These men help specially to vitalise the reputations of the narrower geniuses: such as Crashaw. But their active predilections never contradict the general verdict of the passionate few; rather they reinforce it. A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of pleasure, and because the passionate few can no more neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse. "The right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them. Hence--and I now arrive at my point--the one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest in literature. If you have that, all the rest will come. It matters nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics. The driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of pleasure. You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached via Walham Green or via St. Petersburg.

Great Classic Essays - American and British

Henry Adams (1838-1918) A Law of Acceleration "The new American would need to think in contradictions." Joseph Addison (1672-1719) The Cries of London "The Post I would aim at, is to be Comptroller General of the London Cries." Defence and Happiness of Married Life "For my own part, I was born in Wedlock, and I don't care who knows it." False and True Humour "It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not Humour, than what is." Laughter "Man is the merriest Species of the Creation." On Giving Advice "Upon the reading of a fable, we are made to believe we advise ourselves." A. Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) Exercise "Each moment offers the full cup. Drink, drink deep, drink it off while you may!" Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) Death of a Soldier "Even in his solitary grave in the 'Government Lot,' he would not be without some token of the love which makes life beautiful and outlives death." Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) On Women's Right to Vote "The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons?" Mary Austin (1868-1934) The Land of Little Rain "Void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil." Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Of Revenge "A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well." Of Studies "Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." Of Travel "When a traveller returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him." Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) Going Out for a Walk "I never go out of my way, as it were, to avoid exercise." How Shall I Word It? "The not perfect reader begins to crave some little outburst of wrath." A Relic "It had occurred to me that I might be a writer." Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) A Conversation With a Cat "There is in your complacency no foreknowledge of death nor even of separation." Crooked Streets "How much better are not the beauties of a town seen from Crooked Streets!" Robert Benchley (1889-1945) Advice to Writers "A terrible plague of insufferably artificial and affected authors" Business Letters "As it stands now things are pretty black for the boy." Christmas Afternoon "Done in the Manner, If Not the Spirit, of Dickens" Do Insects Think? "It really was more like a child of our own than a wasp, except that it looked more like a wasp than a child of our own." You! "A homely virtue such as was taught us . . . in a dozen or so simple words, is taken and blown up into a book in which it is stated very impressively in a series of short, snappy sentences, all saying the same thing." Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) Why a Classic Is a Classic "A classic does not survive . . . because it conforms to certain canons." George Berkeley (1685-1753) Pleasures Natural and Fantastical "He is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it." Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) The Art of Controversy "I know not if there is another life, but if there is I do hope that to obtain it all will have to pass a rigid examination in logic and the art of not being a fool." Christmas and the New Year "Christmas is to some extent a day of meaningless ceremonies, false sentiment and hollow compliments endlessly iterated and misapplied." Disintroductions "What I am affirming is the horror of the characteristic American custom of promiscuous, unsought and unauthorized introductions." The Gift o' Gab "Extinction of the orator I hold to be the most beneficent possibility of evolution." James Boswell (1740-1795) On War "My mind expanded itself in reflections upon the horrid irrationality of war." Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) Niagara Falls "Both men and nations are hurried onwards to their ruin or ending as inevitably as this dark flood." Charles Brooks (1878-1934) On the Difference Between Wit and Humor "Is there anything more melancholy than the wit of another generation?" On a Rainy Morning "There is so much life on wet and windy days." The Writing of Essays "He looks at the stars and, knowing in what a dim immensity we travel, he writes of little things beyond dispute." Thomas Browne (1605-1682) On Dreams "A good part of our sleep is peered out with visions and fantastical objects, wherein we are confessedly deceived." Eustace Budgell (1686-1737) On Friendship "A friendship which makes the least noise is very often most useful." Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) Readers and Writers "It is well to keep in practice the power to think for one's self." Gelett Burgess (1866-1951) A Defense of Slang "Slang in America . . . is a frothy compound, and the bubbles break when the necessity of the hour is past." John Burroughs (1837-1921) In Mammoth Cave "Some of these pits are simply appalling." Samuel Butler (1835-1902) On Knowing What Gives Us Pleasure "A man had better stick to known and proved pleasures." John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) Professorial Ethics "[T]he professor is trampled upon, his interests are ignored, he is overworked and underpaid, he is of small social consequence, he is kept at menial employments, and the leisure to do good work is denied him." William James "Now James was an illuminating ray, a dissolvent force. He looked freshly at life, and read books freshly." G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) The Advantages of Having One Leg "All pessimism has a secret optimism for its object." A Piece of Chalk "I was sitting on an immense warehouse of white chalk." The Superstition of School "No man who worships education has got the best out of education." Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) Outside Literature "A sea voyage would have done him good. But it was I who went to sea--this time bound to Calcutta." Susan Fenimore Cooper (1813-1894) Rural Hours "Such open hill-sides . . . bear a kind of heaving, billowy character." Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) Of Greatness "Greatness . . . is a creature of the fancy." William Cowper (1731-1800) On Conversation "We should try to keep up conversation like a ball bandied to and fro from one to the other, rather than seize it all to ourselves, and drive it before us like a football." On Keeping a Secret "That no man may betray the counsel of his friend, let every man keep his own." Stephen Crane (1871-1900) An Experiment in Misery "I sleep up there . . . when I've got the price." Homer Croy (1883-1965) Bathing in a Borrowed Suit "When I came up there was little on me besides the sea foam and a spirit of jollity. The latter was feigned." George William Curtis (1824-1892) The New Year "Let our whitest vow be . . . that age shall no longer be measured by this arbitrary standard of years." Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Natural Selection "Natural selection can act only through and for the good of each being." Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) The Education of Women "To such whose genius would lead them to it, I would deny no sort of learning." The Worst Sort of Husband "What is the worst sort of husband a sober woman can marry?" Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) Jack and Gill: A Mock Criticism "The subject is the fall of men, a subject, high, interesting, worthy of a poet." Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) A Happy Home "I will here lay down an analysis of happiness; and . . . I will give it, not didactically, but wrapped up and involved in a picture of one evening." Charles Dickens (1812-1870) Gin-Shops "Drunken besotted men, and wretched broken-down miserable women" Lying Awake "I devote this paper to my train of thoughts as I lay awake." Mr. Barlow "Immortal Mr. Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness of ages!" Night Walks "Houselessness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle of streets." Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson (1862-1932) Red-Bloods and Mollycoddles "The whole structure of civilisation rests on foundations laid by Mollycoddles; but all the building is done by Red-bloods." Isaac D'Israeli (1766-1848) Review of the Memoirs of Percival Stockdale "While he is forgotten faster than he writes, he still dreams of 'immortality.'" Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) A Glorious Resurrection "My long-crushed spirit rose." W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others "Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission." Of the Passing of the First-Born "He knew no color-line, poor dear--and the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun." John Earle (1601-1665) Three Characters: A Young Man, a Tedious Man, and a Good Old Man "He is a ship without pilot or tackling, and only good fortune may steer him." Max Eastman (1883-1969) What Is Patriotism and What Shall We Do With It? "Not only does everybody like to fight, but everybody has an irresistible tendency to identify himself with a group." Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) Caroline's Letters on Marriage and Separation "Take every precaution before you decide for life, because disappointment and restraint afterwards would be insupportable to your temper." George Eliot (1819-1880) Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft "Men pay a heavy price for their reluctance to encourage self help and independent resources in women." Story-Telling "What is the best way of telling a story? Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1883) Gifts "The only gift is a portion of thyself." Self-Reliance "Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." Edward Everett (1794-1865) Shaking Hands "I beg leave to offer a few remarks on the origin of the practice, and the various forms in which it is exercised." William Faulkner (1897-1962) Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." Owen Felltham (1602-1668) Of Travel "Some men, by travel, change in nothing: and some again, change too much." Henry Fielding (1707-1754) On Reading for Amusement "But as for the bulk of mankind, they are clearly void of any degree of taste" E.M. Forster (1879-1970) My Wood "Pray, does my wood belong to me or doesn't it?" Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Advice on the Choice of a Mistress "In all your amours you should prefer old women to young ones." The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams "Mankind . . . eat about twice as much as nature requires." Imitating the Style of the Spectator "I took some of the tales and turned them into verse." The Temple of Learning "A great many . . . were little better than Dunces and Blockheads. Alas! Alas!" Thoughts on the Subject of Early Marriages "Indeed, from the marriages that have fallen under my observation, I am rather inclined to think that early ones stand the best chance of happiness." The Whistle "Alas!" say I, "he has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle."  Alice Meynell to W.B. Yeats (page three) Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) The Irish Character "When we consider all the fire which glows so untamably in Irish veins, . . . we cannot forbear, notwithstanding all the temporary ills they aid in here, to give them a welcome to our shores." Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) Of Anger "To be angry for every toy debases the worth of thy anger." John Galsworthy (1867-1933) Quality "I will say that for him: not a man in London made a better boot!" Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) The Last Generation in England "The town in which I once resided is situated in a district inhabited by large landed proprietors of very old family." Emma Goldman (1869-1940) On the Street "It would be too dreadful if he should learn that Emma Goldman, the anarchist, had been found soliciting on 14th Street." Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) A City Night Piece "Why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve?" Happiness in a Great Measure Dependent on Constitution "Pleasure is in us, and not in the objects offered for our amusement." Of Eloquence "A man, therefore, may be called eloquent, who transfers the passion or sentiment with which he is moved himself, into the breast of another." On National Prejudices "I should prefer the title of . . . a citizen of the world." Robert Graves (1895-1985) Goodbye to All That "My breaking point was near now, unless something happened to stave it off." Philip Guedalla (1889-1944) Some Historians "Historians' English is not a style; it is an industrial disease." Louise Imogen Guiney (1861-1920) On a Pleasing Encounter With a Pickpocket "I have attained a courteous composure proof against mortal hurricanes." Joseph Hall (1574-1656) The True Friend "When his mate is dead, he accounts himself but half alive." Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) The Haunted Mind "In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon." William Hazlitt (1778-1830) On Corporate Bodies "Corporate bodies are more corrupt and profligate than individuals, because they have more power to do mischief, and are less amenable to disgrace or punishment." On Familiar Style "Many people mistake a familiar for a vulgar style." On the Fear of Death "People walk along the streets the day after our deaths just as they did before." On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth "Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are most mysterious." On Going a Journey "With change of place we change our ideas; nay, our opinions and feelings." On Gusto "In a word, gusto in painting is where the impression made on one sense excites by affinity those of another." Arthur Helps (1813-1875) On the Art of Living With Others "It is probable that in small social circles there is more suffering from unkindness than ill-temper." Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) Camping Out "Any man of average office intelligence can make at least as good a pie as his wife." William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) Essays and Essayists "Your true essayist is in a literary sense the friend of everybody." Maurice Hewlett (1861-1923) The Maypole and the Column "Journalism loves the particular, but literature must hold fast to the general." Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) Superstitions and Recollections of Childhood "Yes, children believe plenty of queer things." James Huneker (1860-1921) Coney Island at Night "What signified to all those strong, bustling men and women the death of a tiny girl baby--dead and hardly clad in a wisp of blackened canvas?" Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) Deaths of Little Children "Made as we are, there are certain pains without which it would be difficult to conceive certain great and overbalancing pleasures." Getting Up on Cold Mornings "Some people say it is a very easy thing to get up of a cold morning." A "Now": Descriptive of a Hot Day "Now doors and brick-walls are burning to the hand; and a walled lane, with dust and broken bottles in it, near a brick-field, is a thing not to be thought of." Spring "[W]e would exhort everybody to do their best for the earth, and all that is upon it, in order that it and they may be thought worth continuance." Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) How It Feels to Be Colored Me "I remember the very day that I became colored." Reading Quiz on "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) A Liberal Education "Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of this mighty game." Washington Irving (1783-1859) Christmas "One of the least pleasing effects of modern refinement is the havoc it has made among the hearty old holiday customs." The Mutability of Literature "Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time." Henry James (1843-1916) London "The British capital is the particular spot in the world which communicates the greatest sense of life." William James (1842-1910) The Essence of Humanism "There is a stage of thought that goes beyond common sense." The Ph.D. Octopus "We of the university faculties are responsible for deliberately creating this new class of American social failures, and heavy is the responsibility. . . . We dangle our three magic letters before the eyes of these predestined victims, and they swarm to us like moths to an electric light." On Some Mental Effects of the Earthquake "I felt no trace whatever of fear; it was pure delight and welcome." Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) Hours of Spring "It is beautiful, every filament. Always beautiful! everything beautiful!" January in the Sussex Woods "[M]igration is purely natural, and acts for the general preservation. Try to put yourself in a bird's place, and you will see that migration is very natural indeed." A Wet Night in London "Human beings reduced to mere hurrying machines, worked by wind and rain, and stern necessities of life." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) The Declaration of Independence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) The Making of Harlem "Harlem . . . is a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world." Outcasts in Salt Lake City "Our cabman . . . was probably the only compassionate soul we should meet in the whole city of the Latter-Day Saints." Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) Books "[T]he ancient sage who thought 'a great book a great evil' would now think the multitude of books a multitude of evils." Conversation "It is always necessary to be loved, not always necessary to be reverenced." The Decay of Friendship "The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay." An Encomium on Sleep "Sleep is necessary to the happy, to prevent satiety, and to endear life by a short absence; and to the miserable, to relieve them by intervals of quiet." Of Spring "[T]he younger part of my readers, to whom I dedicate this vernal speculation, must excuse me for calling upon them, to make use at once of the spring of the year, and the spring of life." On Studies "[M]ethod is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation." On the Style of Jonathan Swift "His style was well suited to his thoughts." The Vanity of Authors "No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a publick library." Ben Jonson (1572-1637) The Difference of Wits "Some wits are swelling and high; others low and still; some hot and fiery; others cold and dull; one must have a bridle, the other a spur." On Education and Style "No matter how slow the style be at first, so it be laboured, and accurate; seek the best." John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) Inaugural Address "Together let us explore the stars." Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) I Have a Dream "Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children." Reading Quiz on "I Have a Dream" Charles Lamb (1775-1834) Blakesmoor in H-----shire, by Charles Lamb "It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted but that traces of the splendour of past inmates were everywhere apparent." Grace Before Meat "The plainest diet seems the fittest to be preceded by the grace." A Few Words on Christmas "Let us not meet to abuse the world, but to make it better by our individual example." New Year's Eve "I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived." That the Worst Puns Are the Best "A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect." D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) Give Her a Pattern "Modern woman isn’t really a fool. But modern man is." Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) Are the Rich Happy? "My judgment is that the rich undergo cruel trials and bitter tragedies of which the poor know nothing." How to Borrow Money "The process is quite easy, provided you borrow enough." How to Live to Be 200 "Just one word about fresh air and exercise. Don't bother with either of them." Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) The Gettysburg Address "This nation shall have a new birth of freedom." Reading Quiz on the Gettysburg Address Second Inaugural Address "With malice toward none, with charity for all . . ." Jack London (1876-1916) The Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake "Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed." Reading Quiz on "The San Francisco Earthquake" What Life Means to Me "I accepted that up above me was all that was fine and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dignity to life." E.L. Lucas (1868-1938) The Perfect Holiday "The secret is that our holidays should rest not only our minds and bodies but our characters too." The Town Week "Tuesday, the base craven, reconciles us to the machine." Robert Lynd (1879-1949) Child's Talk "The problem of making the bath safe for children seems, at the age of six, a matter of far more urgent public importance than the problem of making the world safe for democracy." On Being an Alien "The world can never be made one place so long as men continue to hate foreigners simply because they are foreigners." The Pleasures of Ignorance "One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge." Don Marquis (1878-1937) The Almost Perfect State "How is it that this hideous, halfbrute city is also beautiful and a fit habitation for demi-gods? How come?" Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) The Coffee Houses of London "The coffeehouses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself." On Sadler's Bombastic Declamations "He indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds vigorously out of his compositions after five-and-twenty." Edward Sandford Martin (1856-1939) The Tyranny of Things "An ideal of earthly comfort . . . is to get a house so big that it is burdensome to maintain, and fill it up so full of jimcracks that it is a constant occupation to keep it in order." Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) The Watercress Girl "She don't often beat me; but, when she do, she don't play with me." H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) The Hills of Zion "Dayton was having a roaring time. It was better than the circus." Reading Quiz on "The Hills of Zion" The Libido for the Ugly "Out of the melting pot emerges a race which hates beauty." Literature and the Schoolma'm "The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules." The Lower Depths "The worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English." Portrait of an Ideal World "All the great villainies of history have been perpetrated by sober men, and chiefly by teetotalers." The Nature of Liberty "Policemen are not given night-sticks for ornament." The Penalty of Death "What they want is the peace of mind that goes with the feeling that accounts are squared." The Style of Woodrow "He knew how to arrest and enchant the boobery with words." Suite Américaine "College professors in one-building universities on the prairie, still hoping at the age of sixty to get their whimsical essays into the Atlantic Monthly."  Alice Meynell (1847-1922) Under the Early Stars "Summer dusk . . . is the frolic moment for children." John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) On Virtue and Happiness "There is in reality nothing desired except happiness." A.A. Milne (1882-1956) A Word for Autumn "There is a crispness about celery that is of the essence of October." Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855) A Country Apothecary "He was a most determined bachelor; and so afraid of being mistaken for a wooer, or encouraging the reputation of a gay deceiver, that he was as uncivil as his good-nature would permit to every unwedded female from sixteen to sixty." Edward Moore (1712-1757) The Double Entendre "Of all the improvements in polite conversation, I know of nothing that is half so entertaining and significant as the double entendre." Christopher Morley (1890-1957) The Art of Walking "Sometimes it seems as though literature were a co-product of legs and head." On Going to Bed "The happier creatures . . . take the tide of sleep at the flood and are borne calmly and with gracious gentleness out to great waters of nothingness." On Laziness "Every time we get into trouble it is due to not having been lazy enough." A Morning in Marathon "[W]e flashed onto the Hackensack marshes and into the fully minted gold of superb morning." John Muir (1838-1914) A Wind-Storm in the Forests "But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it." John Henry Newman (1801-1890) A Definition of a Gentleman "He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd." Frank Norris (1870-1902) Simplicity in Art "The simple treatment . . . is always the most difficult of all." Barack Obama (b. 1961) Inaugural Address "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility." George Orwell (1903-1950) A Hanging "We all began laughing again. . . . The dead man was a hundred yards away." Why Are Beggars Despised? "A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living." Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Good Souls "They are fated to go through life, congenial pariahs. They live out their little lives, mingling with the world, yet never a part of it." Mrs. Post Enlarges on Etiquette "As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come." Walter Pater (1839-1894) Success in Life: Conclusion to The Renaissance "To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." Phoebe Yates Pember (1823-1913) Letting Go "No words can do justice to the uncomplaining nature of the Southern soldier." John Reed (1887-1920) The Rise of Pancho Villa "Villa was an outlaw for 22 years." Agnes Repplier (1858-1950) Battle of the Babies "Reading will be but gentle sport in the virtuous days to come." The Passing of the Essay "The essay . . . offers no instruction, save through the medium of enjoyment." Words "For every sentence that may be penned or spoken the right words exist." Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) The Idea of Beauty "As we are then more accustomed to beauty than deformity, we may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and admire it." Grace Rhys (1865-1929) A Brother of St. Francis "The pig is our good little brother, and we have no right to be disgusted at him." James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) On Various Kinds of Thinking "It is clear, in any case, that our convictions on important matters are . . . pure prejudices in the proper sense of that word." John Ruskin (1819-1900) The Dignity of Mechanical Art "I cannot express the amazed awe, the crushed humility, with which I sometimes watch a locomotive take its breath at a railway station." Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) In Praise of Idleness "The road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work." Mark Rutherford (1831-1913) Talking About Our Troubles "We should be very careful for our own sake not to speak much about what distresses us." Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) The Turbid Ebb and Flow of Misery "My own cozy and comfortable family existence was becoming a reproach to me." George Santayana (1863-1952) Intellectual Ambition "The resources of the mind are not commensurate with its ambition." Patriotism "The oppressed subject will glow like the rest with patriotic ardour." The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men "The intelligent man . . . flourishes within a dullard and holds a lunatic in leash." Samuel H. Scudder (1837-1911) Look at Your Fish! "Facts are stupid things . . . until brought into connection with some general law." William Sharp (1855-1905) At the Turn of the Year "The changing seasons are indifferent to our calendars. Autumn may burn the lime and chestnut while Summer is still in her glory." George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) She Would Have Enjoyed It "Why does a funeral always sharpen one's sense of humor?" Why Law Is Indispensable "Laws deaden the conscience of individuals by relieving them of responsibility." What Is Wrong With Our System of Education? "If every secondary school and university in the kingdom were wiped out by an air raid tomorrow . . ., there would be an immediate and enormous increase in the number of really educated persons in England." Valedictory "The English do not know what to think until they are coached . . . in the proper and becoming opinion." Alexander Smith (1830-1867) A Lark's Flight "All these stories have their own touches of terror; yet I am inclined to think that my lark rising from the scaffold . . . is more terrible than any one of them." Robert Southey (1774-1843) Retirement "Their old occupations cling to them even when they hope that they have emancipated themselves." Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773) Letter to His Son: Rules of Conduct in Polite Company "Above all things, and upon all occasions, avoid speaking of yourself." Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions "Resolved, that woman is man's equal." Richard Steele (1672-1729) A Ramble From Richmond to London "I thought it of great use, if they could learn with me to keep their minds open to gratification." Recollections "We groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved from it." Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) An Apology for Idlers "People should be a good deal idle in youth." The Sedulous Ape "That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write." Truth of Intercourse "To explain in words takes time and a just and patient hearing." Virginibus Puerisque: On Marriage "In the first, he expects an angel for a wife; in the last, he knows that she is like himself--erring, thoughtless, and untrue." Walking Tours "To be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone." George S. Street (1867-1936) On Healthy Exercise "Somebody put forward the theory that yawning is a wholesome and invigorating exercise." The Persistence of Youth "At the present time he is a boy up to about thirty-five, a young man up to fifty, and he is hardly regarded as old until he has exceeded David's maximum of life by six or seven years." Simeon Strunsky (1879-1948) The Solid Flesh "I go through my morning exercise with hatred for all the world and contempt for myself." Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation "This degeneracy of conversation . . . hath been owing, among other causes, to the custom arisen, for sometime past, of excluding women from any share in our society." A Meditation Upon a Broomstick "But a broomstick is an emblem of a tree standing on its head." A Modest Proposal "Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year." Reading Quiz on "A Modest Proposal" A Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding "The common forms of good manners were intended for regulating the conduct of those who have weak understandings." When I Come to Be Old "Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, etc." Arthur Symons (1865-1945) The Aspect of London "A London sunset . . . has a colour of smoky rose which can be seen in no other city." Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) Consideration of the Vanity and Shortness of Man's Life "Death meets us every where." William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) Ogres "Now, there are ogres in City courts who lure you into their dens." The Two Children in Black "I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them barefooted and like a beggar." Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) An Island Garden "The boats toss madly on the moorings, the sea breaks wildly on the shore, the world is drowned and gone." Edward Thomas (1878-1917) Broken Memories "Who shall measure the sorrow of him that hath set his heart upon that which the world hath power to destroy?" Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) The Battle of the Ants "I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war." The Last Days of John Brown "[T]he one great rule of composition--and if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on this--is, to speak the truth." Love "One may be drunk with love without being any nearer to finding his mate." Where I Lived, and What I Lived For "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." James Thurber (1894-1961) Which "Never monkey with 'which.'" Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) The Plumber "The plumber is doubtless aware that he is odious. He feels himself, like Dickens's turnpike-man, to be the enemy of mankind." Mark Twain (1835-1910) Advice to Youth "Always obey your parents, when they are present." Corn-Pone Opinions "Tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." A Fable "You can find in a text whatever you bring." Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences "Deerslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens." How I Conquered Stage Fright "If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it is stage-fright." On the Decay of the Art of Lying "Lying is universal: we all do it; we all must do it." Two Ways of Seeing a River "All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river!" Carl Van Doren (1885-1950) A Note on the Essay "What matters is the manner." Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) Who Owns the Mountains? "We measure success by accumulation. The measure is false." Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) The Atlanta Compromise Address "Cast down your bucket where you are." H.G. Wells (1866-1944) Of Conversation: An Apology "I am no blowfly to buzz my way through the universe." The Pleasure of Quarrelling "Without quarrelling you have not fully appreciated your fellow-man." The Writing of Essays "The art of the essayist . . . may be learnt in a brief ten minutes or so." Gilbert White (1720-1793) The English House-Martin "The dams immediately turn their thoughts to the business of a second brood." Stewart Edward White (1873-1946) On Lying Awake at Night "Unlike mere insomnia, lying awake at night in the woods is pleasant." William Allen White (1868-1944) Mary White "The last hour of her life was typical of its happiness." Walt Whitman (1819-1892) A Glimpse of War's Hell Scenes "There was no exultation, very little said, almost nothing, yet every man there contributed his shot." Slang in America "Language in the largest sense . . . is really the greatest of studies." Street Yarn "Come and walk in New York streets." Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young "Only the shallow know themselves." Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Parental Affection "Parents often love their children in the most brutal manner." Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) The Decay of Essay Writing "Under the decent veil of print one can indulge one's egoism to the full." The Modern Essay "The essay must lap us about and draw its curtain across the world." The Patron and the Crocus "Be sure you choose your patron wisely." Street Haunting: A London Adventure "Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way." Writing for My Eye Only "I can trace some increase of ease in my professional writing which I attribute to my casual half hours after tea." Mabel Osgood Wright (1859-1934) The Story of a Garden "Nature tangles things with a motive." W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) Reveries Over Childhood and Youth "If I were you and you were a little girl, I would give you a doll." The Symbolism of Poetry "How can the arts overcome the slow dying of men's hearts that we call progress?"

An Acceptable Prejudice? (Essay on Bias Against Mormons)

An Acceptable Prejudice? May 29, 2012 - 3:00am By Thomas C. Terry It was a fairly typical lunch at an academic conference in the East after the New Hampshire primary in 2008. There was a smattering of endowed professorships and international reputations at the table, perhaps eight academics in all. Along with the sweet tea and penne pasta came the inevitable skewering of George W. Bush. "Never has a president experienced such horrible poll approval numbers in the midst of a war," one professor quipped. "That is, if you overlook Harry Truman," I interjected into an uncomfortable silence. It was going to be that kind of meal. Dessert made its appearance and talk turned to the relative merits of the developing college basketball season and presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were hotly debated – the state’s primary promised to be a pivotal one. Then it was onto the Republicans, and Mitt Romney’s name popped up. "I couldn’t vote for a Mormon," one professor said. There was some polite (or perhaps impolite) head-bobbing. "It’s a cult. Very intolerant, and their opinions about women, and, well ... ” and his voice trailed off. I mentioned I had just been hired at a college in the West with a sizeable student and local population of Mormons -- Idaho State University, in Pocatello. I wondered rhetorically whether anyone said the same thing in 1960 about voting for John F. Kennedy because he was Roman Catholic. Or for then-Senator Obama because he is African-American. There was that same uncomfortable silence again. I think they felt sorry for me. I’ve attended numerous scholarly conferences since that lunch where Mormonism has been discussed, and it is amazing to confront snide and disdainful comments and even overt prejudice from intellectually and sophisticated academics. And it seems perfectly acceptable to express this bias. Mormons are abnormal, outside the mainstream; everybody knows that. They don’t drink alcohol and coffee. Their women are suppressed. They don’t like the cross, and their most holy book seems made up. And there’s that multiple-wives thing. At one session involving a discussion of Utah’s history, several dismissive comments were spoken, rather blithely and without any sense of embarrassment. Belittling comments were made about Mormons' abstemiousness, and there was a general negative undercurrent. The LDS Church was referred to as the Mormon Church, something many members object to. They don’t mind being called Mormons, but their church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or LDS Church. At least some of the professors who were making these remarks knew that. Yes, Mormons do not embrace the cross as a symbol of Christianity, but it is because they consider it representing state-sanctioned execution and intense suffering. I regard it as a sacrifice on my behalf. Who’s right? Various Christian denominations think that during communion the wine and wafers actually are transformed into the body and blood of Christ – and over the centuries Christians have been derided as cannibals. I was raised to believe that the Eucharist represents the sacrifice of Jesus. Nothing more than different perspectives and beliefs. Mormons are excoriated in popular culture (see: "The Simpsons") for the way their church was created by someone who was kind of a con man. And the translation of the Book of Mormon was accomplished with a hat. And the Golden Tablets have been lost. Hmmm. The stone tablets of the Ten Commandments were misplaced, too. And a burning bush talking? Really? It comes down to faith, as it should. Not some sort of ignorant bigotry. Many of the academics consider themselves liberal, socially responsible, and broad-minded individuals, the repository of the best in America. They’re proud of themselves for voting for Barack Obama (a bit too smug maybe?). They would splutter and bluster and be generally outraged to be considered prejudiced. None would consider saying anything similar about African-Americans, Muslims, Jews, Native Americans . . . well, you get the idea. But anti-Mormonism is part of the same continuum that contains discrimination against any group. Why, then, is it allowable publicly express bias against Mormons? In 2009, The Daily Beast compiled a listing of the top 25 safest and 25 most dangerous college campuses in America, based on two-year per capita data from 9,000 campuses with at least 6,000 students. The two states with the highest proportion of Mormons did pretty well in the safest category: #5 was Idaho State University, Pocatello, where I work; #13 was Utah State University, Logan, and #17 was Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. No Utah or Idaho schools were on the most dangerous list. And yet, nestled in the midst of all the good publicity, was this comment about BYU: "Joseph Smith’s golden plates would have been safe at Brigham Young." Would the Daily Beast have said this: “The tablets of the Ten Commandments would have been safe at Brandeis University" or "at Notre Dame University?” Not very likely. But this sort of flippant and biased comment about Mormons is somehow socially acceptable. Responsible people don’t use "Indian giver" anymore (and we shouldn't). But we Welch on deals and get away Scot-free. I have a sprinkling of Welsh and Scottish blood in me, and I don't appreciate those comments. So what, exactly, is so awful about being Mormon? Utah is about 72 percent Mormon, so it's a pretty good representation of Mormonism. Among the 50 states, Utah has the lowest child poverty rate, the lowest teen pregnancy rate, the third-lowest abortion rate, the third-highest high school graduate rate at 94 percent, the highest scores on Advanced Placement exams, fewest births to unwed mothers (also the highest overall birthrate), lowest cancer rate, lowest smoking rate, lowest per capita rate of alcohol use, and, arguably, the most comprehensive and universal state health insurance system in the U.S. Furthermore, Mormons as a group have the lowest rates of violence and depression among religious groups, are seven times less likely to commit suicide (if active church members), and have the lowest divorce rates of any social-religious group. Sixty-five percent of Utah residents have personal computers, the highest penetration rate in the country. Crime has decreased in the state of Utah by anywhere from 15-18 percent over the past 10 years. Mormon women are more likely to be employed in professional occupations than Catholic or Protestant women (similar to Jewish women) and more likely to graduate from college than Catholic or Protestant women (but less than Jewish women). One survey indicated Mormon women experience more orgasms and are more satisfied with their married lives than non-Mormons. Plenty of religious groups – from Orthodox Jews to Orthodox Muslims to various mainstream Christian denominations – do not allow women full participation in the life of their church and communities. But disparaging Roman Catholics, for instance, because their church does not allow female clergy, isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to that faith. Yes, Mormon women wear less revealing clothing – no plunging necklines and short-shorts. But is modesty a bad thing? Glenn Beck is a Mormon, but so is Harry Reid. Other famous Mormons are or were: Harmon Killebrew, Jack Dempsey, J. W. Marriott, Gladys Knight, the Osmonds, Butch Cassidy, and Eldridge Cleaver. What does that tell you about Mormonism? Absolutely nothing. Sure, many people find it annoying to have Mormon missionaries knock on their doors. But what kind of moral and religious conviction must it take to devote up to two years of your life in service to a higher calling, whether it be community service or religious proselytizing? Isn’t this the sort of commitment we want to encourage in young people, who are too often accused of being selfish and jaded? Having students who have been to Mongolia, Paraguay, and Finland enrich my classes, not diminish them. At about 13 million members, Mormons are a pretty large cult. So what is so bad about this “cult?” And a cult growing at almost exactly the same rate, decade by decade, as the original Christian church in the 1st and 2nd centuries. It makes no sense, but then bigotry doesn’t. Who wouldn’t want to be on those lists? Seems like good things to be, even if you can’t drink coffee and beer, wear more than one earring per ear, grow a beard (frowned upon only if you want to move up the church hierarchy), and show lots of cleavage. You can have as much hot chocolate and ice cream as you want, though, and I have embraced this provision enthusiastically. When I first moved to Pocatello, I lived in a cul de sac and seven of my nine neighbors belonged to the LDS Church. Nobody tried to convert me. They invited me to church picnics – no pressure. My next-door neighbor spent nearly two hours one weekday morning (he was late to work) helping me restore my snow blower to life after five years in the humid South. Another helped flush and fix my sprinkler system. A third returned my dogs after they’d escaped. Several just showed up with family members to help me move in. A fourth one tossed me the keys to his Cadillac after the transmission in my Suburban disassembled on my driveway. "Bring it back when you don’t need it anymore," he said. These are not the faces of intolerance and prejudice. No. Those faces are in the academic mirror. I was raised as a member of the United Church of Christ – the same denomination as President Obama and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – and my sister is an ordained minister in the denomination. I am now Episcopalian. An uncle and aunt and several of my first cousins are Mormons; the first was converted while stationed with the Marine Corps in Hawaii. Just why is it socially acceptable to denigrate and trivialize and insult a class of people as a class of people? They had a name for that sort of behavior and system in the South a few decades back. You may remember it. It was called Jim Crow. Bio Thomas C. Terry is associate professor of mass communication at Idaho State University. Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/05/29/essay-about-prejudice-academe-against-mormons#ixzz1wZxkJHc6 Inside Higher Ed