The first typical adolescent of modern times was Wagner's Siegfried. : the music of Siegfried expressed for the first time that co...mbination of (provisional) purity, physical strength, naturism, spontaneity and joie de vivre which was to make the adolescent the hero of our twentieth century, the century of adolescence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his obse...rvations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled "disciple of experience," was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle--practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience--Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"I wonder what life means," said my friend when he had apparently just been thinking. "I have no idea," I volunteered in my cheerf...ul manner, helpful and yet lighthearted at the same time; for philosophy was to me both an agreeable and an instructive science and presented many worthwhile topics of significance and entertainment to the whole world, and would be a useful ornament rather than a disgrace in any adult conversation that claims to be mature and reflect these enlightened modern times, when so many human beings have received a college education that illiterate democracy is simply packed solid with an unprecedented quantity of well-rounded cultural ingredients, much to the united pride of this abounding twentieth century intellect.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The idea of childhood as a social invention, in retrospect, is hardly credible. In the Bible, in writings of the Greeks and Romans..., and in the works of the first great educator of the modern era, Comenius, children were recognized as being both different from adults and different from one another with respect to their stages of development. To be sure, the scientific study of children and the increased length of life in modern times have enhanced our understanding of age differences, but they have always been acknowledged.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as a...n illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime--and a cruelty, too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Side by side with the Marxists of the northern cities, flourishing in the same situation and starting from the same premise, there... appeared at the beginning of the thirties the second of the anti-capitalist movements of the decade, the movement called Southern Agrarianism. If the Marxists wished to give power to the masses, the Agrarians meant to give it to an educated aristocracy ruling over an eighteenth-century economy. Where the Marxists foresaw an ever-growing concentration of industrial activity in units that were to increase in size, the Agrarians strove to break up the large productive units into groups of small ones, and, through decentralization, return to the society of Jefferson's time, when the great bulk of the people owned their own land. The Agrarians, consequently, looked as strenuously at the past as the Marxists did to the future. Where the Marxists drew their inspiration from the socialist thinkers of the nineteenth century, the Agrarians went back to Plato and his philosopher-kings vigorously trained to rule the state, to Carlyle and superman formulators of modern times, to Chesterton and Belloc and their strong religious orthodoxy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... throughout the ages down to modern times, conditions of imprisonment, what with overcrowding, idleness, and all their attendan...t evils, have been such that not only the person but also to a deplorable extent the personality has been "confined or restrained." The problem of the betterment of our physical prison conditions goes hand in hand ... with the problem of re-creating and releasing personality "deep-dungeoned in self," of giving scope to the forces that tend upward, of counteracting and rendering harmless the already dominant tendencies toward evil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As to Mr. Lincoln's name and fame and memory,--all is safe. His firmness, moderation, goodness of heart; his quaint humor, his per...fect honesty and directness of purpose; his logic his modesty his sound judgment, and great wisdom; the contrast between his obscure beginnings and the greatness of his subsequent position and achievements; his tragic death, giving him almost the crown of martyrdom, elevate him to a place in history second to none other of ancient or modern times. His success in his great office, his hold upon the confidence and affections of his countrymen, we shall all say are only second to Washington's; we shall probably feel and think that they are not second even to his.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity to... history, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... these great improvements of modern times are blessings or curses on us, just in the same ratio as the mental, moral, and relig...ious rule over the animal; or the animal propensities of our nature predominate over the intellectual and moral. The spider elaborates poison from the same flower, in which the bee finds materials out of which she manufactures honey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »