Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of t...ime that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Abbe Goussault, a counsellor at High Court, writes [at the end of the 17th century]: "Familiarizing oneself with one's childre...n, getting them to talk about all manner of things, treating them as sensible people and winning them over with sweetness, is an infallible secret for doing what one wants with them. . . . A few caresses, a few little presents, a few words of cordiality and trust make an impression on their minds, and they are few in number that resist these sweet and easy methods of making them persons of honour and probity."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Often, while contemplating works of art, not in their easily perceptible materiality, in the too-clear hieroglyphs of their contou...rs or the obvious meaning of their subject, but in the soul with which they are endowed, in the atmospheric impression that they convey, in the spiritual light or darkness which they pour into our souls, I have felt entering into me a kind of vision of the childhood of their creators. Some little sorrow, some small pleasure of the child, inordinately inflated by an exquisite sensibility, become later on in the adult man, even without his knowing it, the basis of a work of art.... Genius is nothing but childhood clearly formulated, newly endowed with virile and powerful means of self-expression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am being given, if I may venture the expression, birth into death, such is my impression. The feet are clear already, of the gre...at cunt of existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No one's death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul an...d become richer in their humaneness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have progressively improved into a less spiritual species of tenderness--but the seal is not yet fixed though the wax is prepar...ing for the impression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a lustre obliterates. Th...ere is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment--but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each of us is full of too many wheels, screws and valves to permit us to judge one another on a first impression or by two or thre...e external signs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »