The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
Interpretation
Clever individuals often struggle to fit in, facing disdain from the average person while harboring animosity toward each other.
This quote by Jerome K. Jerome highlights the challenges faced by intelligent individuals in society. It suggests that clever people are often misunderstood and disliked by the ordinary populace, and within their own ranks, they may find hostility rather than camaraderie. This intricate dynamic raises questions about the nature of intellect and social acceptance, revealing a sense of alienation and conflict that can exist among the highly intelligent.
In practice
In a discussion about social acceptance, you could quote this to illustrate how clever people may feel alienated.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.
If every small nation with a border dispute believes they can go ahead and launch a pre-emptive war and that it will be approved by the greatest power, that is a very dangerous thing.
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community.
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absenteed myself from Christian assemblies.
All is disgust when a man leaves his own nature and does what is unfit.
Let me say that I don't see any conflict between science and religion. I go to church as many other scientists do. I share with most religious people a sense of mystery and wonder at the universe and I want to participate in religious ritual and practices because they're something that all humans can share.
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