“The impudence of Ignorance”

“But twice-two-makes-four is for all that a most insupportable thing. Twice-two-makes-four is, in my humble opinion, nothing but a piece of impudence. Twice-two-makes-four is a farcical, dressed-up fellow who stands across your path with arms akimbo and spits at you.”

“Yet, I didn't understand that she was intentionally disguising her feelings with sarcasm; that was usually the last resort of people who are timid and chaste of heart, whose souls have been coarsely and impudently invaded; and who, until the last moment, refuse to yield out of pride and are afraid to express their own feelings to you.”

“One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.”

“You cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognizable, in the mud, absurdly set up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts!”

“Do you know, to my thinking it's a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it's better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it's easier to be humble. One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.”

“There is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good family,pleasing presence, average education, to be "not stupid," kindhearted,and yet to have no talent at all, no originality, not a single ideaof one's own—to be, in fact, "just like everyone else."Of such people there are countless numbers in this world—far moreeven than appear. They can be divided into two classes as all mencan—that is, those of limited intellect, and those who are much cleverer.The former of these classes is the happier.To a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing issimpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in thatbelief without the slightest misgiving.Many of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short, puton blue spectacles, and call themselves Nihilists. By doing this they havebeen able to persuade themselves, without further trouble, that theyhave acquired new convictions of their own. Some men have but feltsome little qualm of kindness towards their fellow-men, and the fact hasbeen quite enough to persuade them that they stand alone in the van ofenlightenment and that no one has such humanitarian feelings as they.Others have but to read an idea of somebody else's, and they can immediatelyassimilate it and believe that it was a child of their own brain.The "impudence of ignorance," if I may use the expression, is developedto a wonderful extent in such cases;—unlikely as it appears, it is metwith at every turn.... those belonged to the other class—to the "much cleverer"persons, though from head to foot permeated and saturated withthe longing to be original. This class, as I have said above, is far lesshappy. For the "clever commonplace" person, though he may possiblyimagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has withinhis heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this doubtsometimes brings a clever man to despair. (As a rule, however, nothingtragic happens;—his liver becomes a little damaged in the course of time,nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their aspirations afteroriginality without a severe struggle,—and there have been men who,though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors to humanity,have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of originality)”