Great Throughts Treasury

"What sort of attractions do you think lured our coreligionists out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of European culture? Was it the wit of Molière, or the ingenious stage mechanisms of Pixérécourt? Or was it simply the opportunity to cast an eye, without shame, upon the living, unclad human form?"

"You see these unsold goods taking up space in busy stores and ask yourself, 'Who would ever buy such a thing? To whose antiquated and misguided sense of taste would such a thing appeal?' To the dead, I answer! The dead are the eternally out of fashion!... These piles of unsold goods are conclusive proof of the existence of an eternal and insatiable appetite."

"I've wasted the last five years of my life dealing in religious articles. People today find spiritual solace in ballroom dancing."

"After forty years of selling wholesale industrial deodorizing supplies, one establishment is forced to open its doors to the public. In the lingo of the trade, a salesman explains why their large institution buyers have gone elsewhere. Who wants to stand downwind of the League o' Nations every time some freshman with a bladder infection pulls a Nebuchadnezzar?"

"But today these improvements seem somehow inauthentic. The click is the modern triumphal clarion proceeding us through life, announcing our entry into every lightless room."

"Goat curry and a female librarian, that's what I'm in the mood for."