For all the wisdom in John Gardner's "Art of Fiction," his sallies against 1970's experimentalism are aging poorly, and undergrads seem to dislike his curmudgeonly tone.
"For all the wisdom of counting daily blessings," runs a typical pensee, "perhaps part of being fully alive is living ungratefully... .. "Re exes," goes another, "never trust what you feel now, only what you knew then".
"For all the wisdom of the melancholic is subject to the nether world", Benjamin claims: "it is secured by immersion in the life of creaturely things, and it hears nothing of the voice of revelation.
So, when it comes to trying to predict what the price of oil will be, just remember Rod: "for all the wisdom of a lifetime, no one can ever tell". Believe me, you know as much as anybody else does.
For all the wisdom accumulated in his 24 years in office, Flynn can't seem to explain why these men of status attract women.
For all the wisdom of the Aspen Ideas Festival, said Marx, without engagement from two-thirds of the world's population, innovation stagnates.
But when a man who had become for me the possessor of all wisdom told me these things, when I was 18, the one diminished was myself.
For all the absurdity, wisdom permeates this work.
Yet for all that apparent wisdom, the City also has a habit of not wishing to explore the detail, of basking in a constantly rising share price rather than demanding the answers to awkward questions.
"Thanks for all your wisdom," she wrote.
