Properties
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- 4773
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:18:35.106Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 4726
- text
- 4525 You could tell he wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing.
4526 "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want
4527 to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose
4528 a minute. Not you."
4529 I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn't too sure what he
4530 was talking about. I was pretty sure I knew, but I wasn't too positive at the time. I was too
4531 damn tired.
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4532 "And I hate to tell you," he said, "but I think that once you have a fair idea where
4533 you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're
4534 a student--whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I
4535 think you'll find, once you get past all the Mr. Vineses and their Oral Comp--"
4536 "Mr. Vinsons," I said. He meant all the Mr. Vinsons, not all the Mr. Vineses. I
4537 shouldn't have interrupted him, though.
4538 "All right--the Mr. Vinsons. Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going
4539 to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for
4540 it--to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other
4541 things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened
4542 and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be
4543 excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and
4544 spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.
4545 You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer,
4546 someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it
4547 isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." He stopped and took a big drink out of his
4548 highball. Then he started again. Boy, he was really hot. I was glad I didn't try to stop him
4549 or anything. "I'm not trying to tell you," he said, "that only educated and scholarly men
4550 are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that
4551 educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which,
4552 unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind
4553 them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves
4554 more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the
4555 end. And--most important--nine times out of ten they have more humility than the
4556 unscholarly thinker. Do you follow me at all?"
4557 "Yes, sir."
4558 He didn't say anything again for quite a while. I don't know if you've ever done it,
4559 but it's sort of hard to sit around waiting for somebody to say something when they're
4560 thinking and all. It really is. I kept trying not to yawn. It wasn't that I was bored or
4561 anything--I wasn't--but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.
4562 "Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it
4563 any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What
4564 it'll fit and, maybe, what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts
4565 your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an
4566 extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you.
4567 You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."
4568 Then, all of a sudden, I yawned. What a rude bastard, but I couldn't help it!
4569 Mr. Antolini just laughed, though. "C'mon," he said, and got up. "We'll fix up the
4570 couch for you."
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