Have you ever turned toward an intellectual in a time of authentic anguish and encountered his light appraisal, or evasion, of you...r grief? Or turned to him in a situation of light import only to be met with a heavy, superfluous solemnity?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An honest appraisal of the respective pleasures derived from theater and cinema, at least as to what is less intellectual and more... direct about them, forces us to admit that the delight we experience at the end of a play has a more uplifting, a nobler, one might perhaps say a more moral, effect than the satisfaction which follows a good film. We seem to come away with a better conscience. In a certain sense it is as if for the man in the audience all theater is "Corneillian." From this point of view one could say that in the best films something is missing. It is as if a certain inevitable lowering of the voltage, some mysterious aesthetic short circuit, deprived us in the cinema of a certain tension which is a definite part of theater. No matter how slight this difference it undoubtedly exists, even between the worst charity production in the theater and the most brilliant of Olivier's film adaptations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It becomes clear at once that patriotism undoubtedly belongs to the positive realm. The very word says as much: love of fatherland.... Or is that perhaps giving too lofty an appraisal of the concept in the course of translating it? If the characteristic of true love is that it gives more than it asks, then the good patriot should examine his own sentiment. An inborn attachment to what is one's own does not of itself deserve the name of love. If the state is at peace and is as well-governed as a human community can be, then the citizen's loyalty to his country, his services to it in the forms of energy, devotion, and funds, in general coincide with his own vital interests. The fatherland repays his loyalty by giving him safety, justice, and sometimes even freedom. In fulfilling his patriotic duties he is not performing an act of love. Only when the fatherland is in danger does his giving become a sacrifice, his serving a suffering, his loyalty a love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do your children view themselves as successes or failures? Are they being encouraged to be inquisitive or passive? Are they afraid... to challenge authority and to question assumptions? Do they feel comfortable adapting to change? Are they easily discouraged if they cannot arrive at a solution to a problem? The answers to those questions will give you a better appraisal of their education than any list of courses, grades, or test scores.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Always this same morbid interest in other people and their doings, their privacies, their dirty linen, always this air of alertnes...s for personal happenings, personalities, personalities, personalities. Always this subtle criticism and appraisal of other people, this analysis of other people's motives. If anatomy presupposes a corpse, then psychology presupposes a world of corpses. Personalities, which means personal criticism and analysis, presuppose a whole world laboratory of human psyches waiting to be vivisected. If you cut a thing up, of course it will smell. Hence, nothing raises such an infernal stink, at last, as human psychology.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When one cannot appraise out of one's own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal see...ms chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...when we are going through the aftereffects of a bad jolt in loss of money or pride--and both are closely connected--we should g...et off to ourselves, make an honest appraisal of our shortcomings, and try to find our weak spots and bolster them up before starting in again. First on the program we should figure out a plan to eat. The money we have lost is a small matter; if we can keep our pride and strong faith in ourselves the battle ahead is half won before we start.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He ...becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »