Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its non-mystical methods; above all-which perhaps most explains the expert's sovereignty-of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

The essence of the expert is that his field shall be very special and narrow: one of the ways in which he inspires confidence is to rigidly limit himself to the little toe; he would scarcely venture an off-the-record opinion on an infected little finger.

Doubtless a good general rule for close friendships, where confidences are freely exchanged, is that what one is not informed about, one may not inquire about.

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness.

True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the would be sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.

In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.