Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.

The middles cleave to euphemisms not just because they're an aid in avoiding facts. They like them also because they assist their social yearnings towards pomposity. This is possible because most euphemisms permit the speaker to multiply syllables, and the middle class confuses sheer numerousness with weight and value.

Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and it's fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, humility.

Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.