posted by eftychia at 05:25am on 2005-10-17 under qotd
"Every man owes it to himself (and to his friends) to get away
entirely alone in an isolated shack every so often, if only to find
out just what bad company he can be." -- Robert Benchley
For the record, by the way, the quote is the start of the essay ``Sweet Solitude,'' printed (among, I'm sure, other places) in My Ten Years In A Quandary (And How They Grew). It's a very funny essay about the problem of just getting away, alone, by oneself.
Following Benchley's other famous quote -- the next lines are, ``I don't mean just getting upstairs alone for an evening and reading bound volumes of Harper's Ferry without answering the telephone. There's quite a kick in that, and one ought to come downstairs the next morning a better man. What I mean is an isolation that would make Thoreau on Walden Pond look like a bookmaker at a racetrack. I mean to have somebody drive you out to a shack on a sand dune and then drive off without you, calling back, `See you Thursday!' `Let's see -- Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- Hey, Eddie, come back!'''
Before long the attempt to catch up on one's reading goes wrong, too.
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(no subject)
For the record, by the way, the quote is the start of the essay ``Sweet Solitude,'' printed (among, I'm sure, other places) in My Ten Years In A Quandary (And How They Grew). It's a very funny essay about the problem of just getting away, alone, by oneself.
Following Benchley's other famous quote -- the next lines are, ``I don't mean just getting upstairs alone for an evening and reading bound volumes of Harper's Ferry without answering the telephone. There's quite a kick in that, and one ought to come downstairs the next morning a better man. What I mean is an isolation that would make Thoreau on Walden Pond look like a bookmaker at a racetrack. I mean to have somebody drive you out to a shack on a sand dune and then drive off without you, calling back, `See you Thursday!' `Let's see -- Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday -- Hey, Eddie, come back!'''
Before long the attempt to catch up on one's reading goes wrong, too.
(no subject)
I like the longer quotation better (which probably isn't surprising). Thank you for providing it. Clearly I need to put Benchley on my reading list.