The tourist is first of all an adventurer. The dream is of the pioneer, the explorer, the great voyager or the conquering emperor.... He leaves the security of home far behind and sets out beyond the perimeters of the known world for fame, fortune and excitement. He wants to take on the minotaur, scale the Matterhorn, discover a lost Amazonian tribe or sample the delights of a Thai brothel.... The essence of the tourist adventure is exhibited in the contours of the excitements that it provides. And these contours are best inferred from the stories that are told and re-told with animation to relatives, friends and colleagues at home. It is virtually never what has been seen that is recounted with enthusiasm. When the sites are described it is in the form of ritualized cliches: the Eiffel Tower really is a wonder--we went up it, and you get such a nice view. It is rather the personal moments of the tour, moments of near-crisis, that in retrospect were exciting: when one of the suitcases failed to arrive off the luggage chute at Frankfort Airport. Touring itself has been turned into a routine, restricting adventure to those moments when routine breaks down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We should not leave Shopping World without questioning our initial assumption, that here we are in the modern agora. The agora of ...the classical Greek city was similar, in being the market-place and yet serving as much more, indeed as the most important public space. When a citizen left the privacy of his home, wishing to engage in public life, most likely he went to the agora. Shopping World at its most general is a public space. It answers to one of the most basic of human needs, that for society in the sense of a defined space among people in which to see and be seen, in which to move and to meet, to linger and to evade, a space at the same time in which to conduct some of life's important business--in this case shopping. The Greek agora, however, was different in one crucial respect, a difference that highlights a momentous development in modern life. It was surrounded by civic buildings and temples; it served as the daily centre not only of commerce, but also of religious, political, judicial, and indeed general social life. To be in public in ancient Athens meant to be a citizen, and likely enough to be engaged in civic duties. In modern life, by contrast, the areas of political action have become so remote that to be in public for a person has lost all connotation of being a responsible citizen with duties to his community.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Besides, you start drinking whiskey gambling, it gives you an excuse for losing. That's something you don't need, an excuse for lo...sing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Eddie Felson: Church of the Good Hustler. Charlie: Looks more like a morgue to me. Those tables are the slabs they lay the st...iffs on. Eddie Felson: I'll be alive when I get out, Charlie.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My one pupil has begun his work with me, and I will give you a description how the lecture is conducted. It is the most important ...point, you know, that the tutor should be dignified and at a distance from the pupil, and that the pupil should be as much as possible degraded.... So I sit at the further end of the room; outside the door (which is shut) sits the scout; outside the outer door (also shut) sits the sub-scout: half-way downstairs sits the sub- sub-scout: and down in the yard sits the pupil. The questions are shouted from one to the other, and the answers come back in the same way--it is rather confusing till you are well used to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »