All that is solid melts into air. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.
I feel that very strongly: having been an academic, having been tempted by the invitation to stay on to become a Ph.D., a professor, and all that, one side of me certainly does respect all disciplines, as long as they don't ossify.
Theta crashed next to them on the thick zebra-skin rug. “I’m embalmed.” “Potted and splificated?” “Ossified to the gills. Time for night-night.
The tendency of old age to the body, say the physiologists, is to form bone. It is as rare as it is pleasant to meet with an old man whose opinions are not ossified.
A creed is an ossified metaphor.
It is idle to dispute with old men. Their opinions, like their cranial sutures, are ossified.
To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.