Louis Kronenberger Quotes

The more cultured a man, the less fortunate he is.

They may be a little more high brow than we are.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

My father used to say, "Superior people never make long visits, have to be shown Longfellows grave, or the glass flowers at Harvard."

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.

We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.

I aspired to be extremely sophisticated.

Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it.

I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up.

My parents both had Oxford degrees, they read important books, spoke foreign languages, drank real coffee and went to museums for pleasure. People like that don't have fat kids: they were cut out to be winners and winners don't have children who are overweight.

Behavior change is critical. While we’re working upstream, developing solutions, we’ve got to be thinking of delivery: How should we develop and deliver those solutions so that they will be adopted.

Listening to classical music is like reading philosophy books. Not everybody has to do it.

In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane from the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

Only the refined and delicate pleasures that spring from research and education can build up barriers between different ranks.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

Philosophy must indeed recognize the possibility that the people rise to it, but must not lower itself to the people.

Ordinary people have big TVs. Extraordinary people have big libraries.

I look around and there are needs that people have. Places have needs. These times have needs, and I have the education and the ability to communicate with it and help to solve those needs.

Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.

Knowledge is the only elegance.

Everyone knows that in most people's estimation, to do anything cooly is to do it genteelly.

Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.