The world must be rather a rough place for clever people. Ordinary folk dislike them, and as for themselves, they hate each other most cordially.
Interpretation
Clever individuals often struggle to fit in, facing disdain from the average person while harboring animosity toward each other.
This quote by Jerome K. Jerome highlights the challenges faced by intelligent individuals in society. It suggests that clever people are often misunderstood and disliked by the ordinary populace, and within their own ranks, they may find hostility rather than camaraderie. This intricate dynamic raises questions about the nature of intellect and social acceptance, revealing a sense of alienation and conflict that can exist among the highly intelligent.
In practice
In a discussion about social acceptance, you could quote this to illustrate how clever people may feel alienated.
Some people are under the impression that all that is required to make a good fisherman is the ability to tell lies easily and without blushing; but this is a mistake. Mere bald fabrication is useless; the veriest tyro can manage that. It is in the circumstantial detail, the embellishing touches of probability, the general air of scrupulous - almost of pedantic - veracity, that the experienced angler is seen.
It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are made of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.
A cat's got her own opinion of human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you anxious not to hear the whole of it.
What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.
There is a vulgar incredulity, which in historical matters, as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine.
The aim of torture is to destroy a person as a human being, to destroy their identity and soul. It is more evil than murder.
No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?
I think that when in doubt about the truth of an issue, it's safer and in better taste to select the least numerous of the adversaries.
Dear Sir: Regarding your article 'What's Wrong with the World?' I am. Yours truly.
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