Attitudinizing: expressing opinions in order to
reinforce within oneself a certain outlook, instead of
communicating an idea to others or discovering an
insight previously unknown. You have to realize that
every point of view, however reasonable and complete
it seems to be, is subject to change from new information
or deeper understanding; that this continual transform-
ation is desirable and to resist it for no other reason
than fatigue is Accidie (spiritual inertia) not self
protection; that it is no use to express opinions to
others at all, because they already have those: what
they need is knowledge & techniques.

"It may seem too much to say that ignorance was
the curse of the Romantic poets. But certainly
characteristics that distinguished them from major
figures before their time include impatience, super-
ficiality, a false cult of originality, a tendency to
improvise rather than think. They shared the belief
that a man could dissociate himself from the society
of his time and still say things relevant to it." --Philip
Hobsbaun, Tradition and Experiment in English
Poetry (1979)

"There also now exists a sizeable American following
for every religious sect in the world, not excluding
denominations which were thought to be extinct..."
--André Kukla

"...philosophy is, among the serious intellectual
disciplines, probably the most fashion prone..."
--Michael Tanner

   "The better poet
Claimed eleven grounds of love,
   The worse twelve trillion."
--Jeremy Morse (in Word Ways)

"The whole history of earlier Alexandrianism, a
steady laborious poetical movement which went
on at full pressure for something like half a century,
is the history of an attempt to bring poetry back into
touch with life, to reinstate it as a living art." --J W
Mackail

The centrifugal force that pulls people apart, as long
as it remains ascendant, makes every awkward &
discordant connection necessary. The trick is not to
overestimate what immediate good will come of it.