Abundance (n.) can smother: blocked in the narrow passages by his own flesh supply, he must eat and drink a clear space to rescue himself.
Abundance (n.) of nature is not generosity but its opposite: so many duplicate trees, so many existences begun again and again missed, like an insect fallen on its back — dismal, ailing, embarrassed at itself.
Abundance (n.) of nature's bounty can paralyze: a country that only gives has no lessons to teach — its pleasures without remedy, its joys without hope.
Abundance (n.) is not spontaneous: someone produces it, and their interest is to restrict it — vine-growers banning new vines, the Dutch burning spices, guilds capping journeymen.
Average (n.) is constantly raised and broadened into a platform for every operation — the uncanniest sign that the sites of decision are disappearing.
Average (n.) becomes better and better — and by this very bettering secures its dominion ever more irresistibly and inconspicuously.
The Average (n.) is the normal person's idea of truth: whatever is average and therefore universally valid passes for what is true — the eternal average.
The Average (n.) is what makes the modern age endure: the balancing out of the essential and the aberrant into the self-evident, until the difference between real work and busyness is not just unrecognizable but unreal.
A Constant (n.) is not opposed to variable; it is one treatment of the variable — universals no more exist in themselves in linguistics than in economics.
A Constant (n.) is defined less by its permanence than by its function as a center.
The Dose (n.) is like a volume knob the body keeps quietly turning down.
The Dose (n.) is measured in milligrams by the pharmacist and in handfuls by the patient.
The Dose (n.) gets doubled by anyone who reads "as needed" as a dare.
A Dose (n.) is written for an average body that has never walked into the room.