The distinction between the two types of art is a difference of density rather than of species. In the same number of bars of Beet...hoven and Sousa, there is, in Beethoven, more of the essence of music, giving a thicker, more intense effect likely to alienate the unfamiliar listener by "boring" him, just as the palate accustomed to that richer food is bored by the thinness of the popular tune. The feeling that this is not the only difference is due to the fact that as an art grows more and more complex and dense, the number of relations among simple elements increases until those relations look like extraordinarily refined experiences denied to the common herd. Yet there is no real barrier to be leaped over by an effort of genius between understanding a "vulgar" dance tune and a Beethoven symphony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I felt more determined than ever to become a physician, and thus place a strong barrier between me and all ordinary marriage. I mu...st have something to engross my thoughts, some object in life which will fill this vacuum and prevent this sad wearing away of the heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since childhood, I have been enchanted by the fact and the symbolism of the right hand and the left--the one the doer, the other t...he dreamer. The right is order and lawfulness, le droit. Its beauties are those of geometry and taut implication. Reaching for knowledge with the right hand is science. Yet to say only that much of science is to overlook one of its excitements, for the great hypotheses of science are gifts carried in the right hand. Of the left hand we say that it is awkward and, while it has been proposed that art students can seduce their proper hand to more expressiveness by drawing first with the left, we nonetheless suspect this function. The French speak of the illegitimate descendent as being à main gauche, and, though the heart is virtually at the center of the thoracic cavity, we listen for it on the left. Sentiment, intuition, bastardy. And should we say that reaching for knowledge with the left hand is art? Again it is not enough, for as surely as the recital of a daydream differs from the well-wrought tale, there is a barrier between undisciplined fantasy and art. To climb the barrier requires a right hand adept at technique and artifice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the e...ndless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in t...he younger ore and better veins of the mine--and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so--and now the dross is coming.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fences, unlike punishments, clearly mark out the perimeters of any specified territory. Young children learn where it is permissib...le to play, because their backyard fence plainly outlines the safe area. They learn about the invisible fence that surrounds the stove, and that Grandma has an invisible barrier around her cabinet of antique teacups.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Blood has been harder to dam back than water. Just when we think we have it impounded safe... Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!), It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year--it is more n...early when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time,... forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse... of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »