Unaware of history's higher significance, I slumbered through the bliss of infancy, feeling no impulse whatever to make something of myself. - Russell Baker

Long words, fat talk — they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?

The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

The changeover from knickers to long pants was the ritual recognition that a boy had reached adolescence, or “the awkward age,” as everybody called it. The “teenager,” like the atomic bomb, was still uninvented, and there were few concessions to adolescence, but the change to long pants was a ritual of recognition.