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Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.

Joseph Wood Krutch

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Joseph Wood Krutch
Age: 76 †
Born: 1893
Born: November 25
Died: 1970
Died: May 22
Biographer
Journalist
Literary Critic
Naturalist
Theatre Critic
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Without
Cockroach
Well
Cockroaches
Would
Miss
Although
Bird
Missing
Along
Wells

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In the long run our boasted control of nature is a delusion.
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Rhetoric takes no real account of the art in literature and morality takes no account of the art in life.
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It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.
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Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I have never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.
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We must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not we should like to live in it the question is whether those who have grown up in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of the past.
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The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism, but February.... Spring is too far away to comfort even by anticipation, and winter long ago lost the charm of novelty. This is the very three a.m. of the calendar.
Joseph Wood Krutch
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The grand paradox of our society is this: we magnify man’s right but we minimize his capacities.
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The impulse to mar and to destroy is as ancient and almost as nearly universal as the impulse to create. The one is an easier way than the other of demonstrating power.
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There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.
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The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of one thing and one thing only.
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The cockroach and the bird were both here long before we were. Both could.
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Nature takes no account of even the most reasonable of human excuses.
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To have passed through life and never experienced solitude is to have never known oneself. To have never known oneself is to have never known anyone.
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The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.
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In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.
Joseph Wood Krutch
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When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.
Joseph Wood Krutch
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Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
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There are some optimists who search eagerly for the skunk cabbage which in February sometimes pushes itself up through the ice, and who call it a sign of spring. I wish that I could feel that way about it, but I do not. The truth of the matter, to me, is simply that skunk cabbage blooms in the winter time.
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Not to have known - as most men have not - either the mountain or the desert is not to have known one's self. Not to have known one's self is to have known no one.
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There is no such thing as a dangerous woman there are only susceptible men.
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