Commonplace Book

'We are all of us only too familiar with the popular phrase "Ivory Tower." It is a phrase used very literally by certain rough-and-tumble hail-fellow-well-met rufflers and bullies and rodomontaders of the ordinary critical world, whose academic position and prestige would be seriously impaired the moment any kind of especially penetrating scholarship or particularly daring metaphysical speculation or unusually subtle aesthetic appreciation began to be demanded by public opinion. As a matter of fact, in spite of these artistic rowdies it is a sign of stupidity in us, not a sign of strength, when we resist the offer made to us by Fate or Chance or Providence to build what these swashbucklers call an Ivory Tower in some secret back-garden in the private half of the double life which we have to lead if our existence is to be at all happy or satisfactory.'

from Visions and Revisions by John Cowper Powys (Introduction)