It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
E. B. WhiteRead
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
Interpretation
People are more sensitive to being perceived as foolish than being seen as unfair.
This quote by E. B. White suggests that individuals often prioritize their image and how they are perceived by others, especially concerning their intelligence or judgment. The emphasis is on the societal tendency to fear looking silly more than being seen as unjust, indicating that self-image and public perception can overshadow concerns about moral integrity.
In practice
In a debate about social norms, one might use this quote to highlight how people value their image.
It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
It isn't silence you can cut with a knife any more, it's interchange of ideas. Intelligent discussion of practically everything is what is breaking up modern marriage.
The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.
A good farmer is nothing more nor less than a handy man with a sense of humus.
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
If slavery, limited as it yet is, now threatens to subvert the Constitution, how can we as wise and prudent statesmen, enlarge its boundaries and increase its influence, and thus increase already impending dangers?
For many years, I have lived uncomfortably with the belief that most planning and architectural design suffers for lack of real and basic purpose. The ultimate purpose, it seems to me, must be the improvement of mankind.
This thing called nationalism is a treasure that a country uses to try to develop and a nationality uses to try to survive. China has lost this treasure.
It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.