Quoting: "Won't you sit down?"

What is education? Lafcadio Hearn said it is what is left after everything you have learned has dissipated into air. But say it never does dissipate, never does fuse or melt so the gold is never extracted? What shall you do then? The next best thing is to quote, my dear, like sitting down when you are tired. Once in Altman's department store Emily Post, fatigued by shopping and unable to find a chair, sat down on the floor with her legs stretched out in front of her and her packages to either side, and sat there, too imperious to be challenged, till she was ready to get up again. Quoting is like that. A chair trundled up. Won't you sit down? Thank you, I think I shall, just here on a remark by William James to the effect that "Experience is the state of having been occupied in the intercourse of life."

     --From Ardyth's memoir Bodies Adjacent