I Think The Story Is

If Geniuses Can Sometimes Make Mistakes, Cannot The Rest Of Us On Occasion Be Geniuses?

The Best Joke-tellers Are Those Who Have The Patience To Wait For Conversation To Come Around To The Point Where The Jokes In Their Repertoire Have Application.

While Reading Writers Of Great Formulatory Power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I Find I Can Scarcely Get Through A Page Without Having To Stop To Record Some Lapidary Sentence. Reading Henry James, For Example, I Have Muttered To Myself, "c’mon, Henry, Turn Down The Brilliance A Notch, So I Can Get Some Reading Done." I May Be One Of A Very Small Number Of People Who Have Developed Writer’s Cramp While Reading.

I Am Not Merely A Habitual Quoter But An Incorrigible One. I Am, I May As Well Face It, More Quotatious Than An Old Stock-market Ticker-tape Machine, Except That You Can't Unplug Me.

Generalization, Especially Risky Generalization, Is One Of The Chief Methods By Which Knowledge Proceeds... Safe Generalizations Are Usually Rather Boring. Delete That "usually Rather." Safe Generalizations Are Quite Boring.