The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to contruct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others... like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The archetype of all humans, their ideal image, is the computer, once it has liberated itself from its creator, man. The computer ...is the essence of the human being. In the computer, man reaches his completion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on e...ntering York Minster or St. Peter's at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,--faint copies of an invisible archetype.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as the archetype of the supermom--the woman who can do it all--minimizes the real needs of women, so too the archetype of the... "superkid" minimizes the real needs of children. It makes it all right to treat a young child as if he or she were older.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Archetypes resemble the beds of rivers: dried up because the water has deserted them, though it may return at any time. An archety...pe is something like an old watercourse along which the water of life flowed for a time, digging a deep channel for itself. The longer it flowed the deeper the channel, and the more likely it is that sooner or later the water will return.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Printer, philosopher, scientist, author and patriot, impeccable husband and citizen, why isn't he an archetype? Pioneers, Oh Pione...ers! Benjamin was one of the greatest pioneers of the United States. Yet we just can't do with him. What's wrong with him then? Or what's wrong with us?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each city is an archetype rather than a prototype, an exaggerated example from which to derive lessons for the typical. Each city ...vividly superimposes elements of a supranational scale on the local fabric: churches in the religious capital, casinos in the entertainment capital. These cause violent juxtapositions of use and scale in both cities. Rome's churches, off streets and piazzas, are open to the public; the pilgrim, religious or architectural, can walk from church to church. The gambler or architect in Las Vegas can similarly take in a variety of casinos along the Strip. The casinos and lobbies of Las Vegas are ornamental and monumental and open to the promenading public.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favor with its original audience as ...a new generation grows up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of "quaint," and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is log...ically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptat...ion to the ego.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »