You remember the old Roadrunner cartoons, where the coyote would run off a cliff and keep going, until he looked down and happened to notice that he was running on nothing more than air?" "Yeah." "Well," he said, "I always used to wonder what would have happened if he'd never looked down. Would the air have stayed solid under his feet until he reached the other side? I think we're all like that. We start heading out across this canyon, looking straight ahead at the thing that matters, but something, some fear or insecurity, makes us look down. And we see we're walking on air, and we panic, and turn around and scramble like hell to get back to solid ground. And if we just wouldn't look down, we could make it to the other side. The place where things matter.
Jonathan Tropper
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More Jonathan Tropper
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JONATHAN KOZOL The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet w... JONATHAN SWIFT Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives. JONATHAN SWIFT Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will ... JONATHAN SWIFT What some people invent the rest enlarge. JONATHAN SWIFT All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits. JONATHAN SWIFT Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you pleas... JONATHAN SWIFT In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my he... JONATHAN SWIFT Better belly burst than good liquor be lost. JONATHAN SWIFT We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same. JONATHAN SWIFT Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the wor... JONATHAN SWIFT Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent. JONATHAN SWIFT What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a n... JONATHAN MILLER Coffee makes us severe, and grave, and philosophical. JONATHAN SWIFT Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar re... JONATHAN RABAN One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish h... JONATHAN SWIFT And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to... JONATHAN SWIFT Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. JONATHAN KOZOL Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same positio... JONATHAN SWIFT The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman. JONATHAN SWIFT I wasn't driven into medicine by a social conscience but by rampant curiosity. JONATHAN MILLER For the rest, Whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through e... JONATHAN SWIFT We have a choice: to plow new ground or let the weeds grow. JONATHAN WESTOVER I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations , JONATHAN KOZOL What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly. JONATHAN SWIFT I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning. JONATHAN SWIFT One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good. JONATHAN SWIFT When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in ... JONATHAN SWIFT 'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men... JONATHAN SWIFT She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk. JONATHAN SWIFT One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of t... JONATHAN RABAN I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contrib... JONATHAN SWIFT It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: a... JONATHAN SWIFT Come, agree, the law's costly. JONATHAN SWIFT There's none so blind as they that won't see. JONATHAN SWIFT Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; wh... JONATHAN SWIFT Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse w... JONATHAN SWIFT Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserte... JONATHAN RABAN But when a Man JONATHAN SWIFT Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to. JONATHAN SWIFT There are two sorts of hypocrites; ones that are deceived with their outward morality and external r... JONATHAN EDWARDS Attitudes to museums have changed. If it had Marilyn Monroe's knickers or Laurence Olivier's jockstr... JONATHAN MILLER Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected. JONATHAN EDWARDS I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words ... JONATHAN SWIFT Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age. JONATHAN SWIFT Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth,... JONATHAN SWIFT I wont quarrel with my bread and butter. JONATHAN SWIFT I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing. JONATHAN SWIFT It was a bold person that first ate an oyster. JONATHAN SWIFT A bad forgery's the ultimate insult. JONATHAN GASH Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken. JONATHAN SWIFT