- "Damn him, anyway. He's so stupid it breaks your heart. He's like everybody else in television. And Hollywood. And Broadway. He thinks everything sentimental is tender, and everything that runs into physical violence is a legitimate climax to something that isn't even -" - Zooey
- "I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly every hear the word 'wisdom' mentioned!" - Franny
- "As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure - or even intellectual treasure. As you say, treasure's treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety percent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are." - Zooey
- "The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and Professor Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that - and you do - and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers." - Zooey
- "How in the hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?" - Zooey
aug 30 2011 ∞
aug 30 2011 +