Opera In English Is, In The Main,

How Little It Takes To Make Life Unbearable: A Pebble In The Shoe, A Cockroach In The Spaghetti, A Woman's Laugh.

I Believe That It Should Be Perfectly Lawful To Print Even Things That Outrage The Pruderies And Prejudices Of The General, So Long As Any Honest Minority, However Small, Wants To Read Them. The Remedy Of The Majority Is Not Prohibition, But Avoidance.

Consider Him In His Highest Incarnation: The University Professor. What Is His Function? Simply To Pass On To Fresh Generations Of Numskulls A Body Of So-called Knowledge That Is Fragmentary, Unimportant, And, In Large Part, Untrue. His Whole Professional Activity Is Circumscribed By The Prejudices, Vanities And Avarices Of His University Trustees, I.e., A Committee Of Soap-boilers, Nail Manufacturers, Bank-directors And Politicians. The Moment He Offends These Vermin He Is Undone. He Cannot So Much As Think Aloud Without Running A Risk Of Having Them Fan His Pantaloons.

If There Was Ever A Dissenter From The National Optimismit Was Surely Edgar Allan Poe--without Question The Bravest And Mostoriginal, If Perhaps Also The Least Orderly And Judicious, Of All The Critics That We Have Produced.

The Truth Is . . . That The Great Artists Of The World Are Never Puritans, And Seldom Ever Ordinarily Respectable. No Virtuous Man - That Is, Virtuous In The Ymca Sense - Has Ever Painted A Picture Worth Looking At, Or Written A Symphony Worth Hearing, Or A Book Worth Reading, And It Is Highly Improbable That The Thing Has Ever Been Done By A Virtuous Woman.