If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary t...o fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.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 »
What then is the difference between film and theatre? Or should one not rather ask: what are the differences? Let us be content wi...th the reply that the screen has two dimensions and the stage three, that the screen presents photographs and the stage living actors. All the subtler differences stem from these. The camera can show us all sorts of things--from close-ups of insects to panoramas of prairies--which the stage cannot even suggest, and it can move from one to another with much more dexterity than any conceivable stage. The stage, on the other hand, can be revealed in the unsurpassable beauty of three-dimensional shapes, and the stage actor establishes between himself and his audience a contact real as electricity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Y'know scientists are funny. We probe and measure and dissect. Invent lights without heat, weigh a caterpillar's eyebrow. But when... it comes to really important things we're as stupid as the caveman.... Like love. Makes the world go 'round, but what do we know about it? Is it a fact? Is it chemistry? Electricity?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets--the little thri...lling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty--surely they are due to Steam?" "And when we travel by electricity--if I may venture to develop your theory--we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Prudence and justice tell me that in electricity and steam there is more love for man than in chastity and abstinence from meat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Nia...gara Falls) that my "poems" are competing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »