The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
Interpretation
Intellectuals often feel distressed or challenged by the ideas and works of their peers.
This quote reflects the idea that those who engage deeply with intellectual pursuits may find themselves in a state of turmoil due to the works of their contemporaries. The critique, aspirations, and standards set by fellow intellectuals can lead to feelings of inadequacy, competition, and restlessness, as they constantly measure themselves against the achievements and thoughts of others.
In practice
In a discussion about the pressures of academia, one might say, 'Remember, as Jacques Barzun pointed out, the intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.'
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect
And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to do another and harder and better one.
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Hoping a situation will change keeps you at a distance from your true feelings-sadness, anger, fear. Each of these feelings is best appreciated up close. Feel them deeply, and they will cease to bother you. Hope they'll go away, and they'll bother you all day.
It is important that you don't let your opponent impose his style of play on you. A part of that begins mentally. At the chessboard if you start blinking every time he challenges you then in a certain sense you are withdrawing. That is very important to avoid.
Maybe a thing that you do not like is really in your interest. It is possible that a thing that you may desire may be against your interest.
A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.
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