Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of t...ime that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is beautiful: it strikes at first sight, and attracts without a reas...on. And as this beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things, so also is there analogous to it a beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eye perceiveth the one, so the mind doth by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty, is ever quickest and purest in the noblest minds.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: i...t is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it... earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time--this one, for instance--as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners,... and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I care not for the theoretical symmetry and impregnable logic of your moral code, I care not for the hoary respectability and trad...itional mysticisms of your theological institutions, I care not for the beauty and solemnity of your rituals and religious ceremonies, I care not even for the reasonableness and unimpeachable fairness of your social ethics,--if it does not turn out better, nobler, truer, men and women,--if it does not add to the world's stock of valuable souls,--if it does not give us a sounder, healthier, more reliable product from this great factory of men--I will have none of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I claim ... that there is a feminine as well as a masculine side to truth ...That as the man is more noble in reason, so the woman... is more quick in sympathy. That as he is indefatigable in pursuit of abstract truth, so is she in caring for the interests by the way--striving tenderly and lovingly that not one of the least of these "little ones" should perish. That while we not unfrequently see women who reason, we say, with the coolness and precision of a man, and men as considerate of helplessness as a woman, still there is a general consensus of mankind that the one trait is essentially masculine and the other as peculiarly feminine. That both are needed to be worked into the training of children, in order that our boys may supplement their virility by tenderness and sensibility, and our girls may round out their gentleness by strength and self-reliance. That, as both are alike necessary in giving symmetry to the individual, so a nation or a race will degenerate into mere emotionalism on the one hand, or ballism on the other, if dominated by either exclusively; lastly, and most emphatically, that the feminine factor can have its proper effect only through woman's development and education so that she may fitly and intelligently stamp her force on the forces of her day, and add her modicum to the riches of the world's thought.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is this world of ours? A complex entity subject to sudden changes which all indicate a tendency to destruction; a swift succe...ssion of beings which follow one another, assert themselves and disappear; a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »