brilliance quotes

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A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents. A book full of brilliance imparts some of it even to its opponents.

Friedrich Nietzsche

books | spirit | wit

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Painting throughout its history has served many purposes, has been flat and has used perspective, has been framed and has been lef... - MORE Painting throughout its history has served many purposes, has been flat and has used perspective, has been framed and has been left borderless, has been explicit and has been mysterious. But one act of faith has remained a constant.... The act of faith consisted in believing that the visible contained hidden secrets, that to study the visible was to learn something more than could be seen in a glance.... Jackson Pollock was driven by a despair which was partly his and partly that of the times which nourished him, to refuse this act of faith: to insist, with all his brilliance as a painter, that there was nothing behind, that there was only that which was done to the canvas on the side facing us.

John Berger

painters and painting

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We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.... The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom,... - MORE We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.... The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

Omar Bradley

nuclear age | war

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The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shin... - MORE The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.

Robert Bresson

writing: scripts and screenplays

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Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brillian... - MORE Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable, nothing so rough and uncultured as not to gain brilliance and refinement from eloquence.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

eloquence | oratory

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Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,... - MORE Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs,
Rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys,
Advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm,
Retreating to the corner of arm and knee,
Eager to be reassured, taking pleasure
In the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree....

T.S. Eliot

babies

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An ideologue may be defined as a mad intellectual. He is not interested in ideas, but—almost the exact contrary—in one idea. W... - MORE An ideologue may be defined as a mad intellectual. He is not interested in ideas, but—almost the exact contrary—in one idea. When he erects this idea into a system and forces the system to give birth to a way of life, confusion often results, usually to his great surprise. Two examples are Robespierre and Lenin. The intellectual is occasionally blamed for the work of the ideologue, which is like condemning the psychiatrist because he and the patient are both involved in the same thing, mental illness. The ideologue is often brilliant. Consequently some of us distrust brilliance when we should distrust the ideologue.... The ideologue is often more persuasive than the intellectual because he has a simpler line of goods to sell and never questions its value. Sometimes he achieves great success by attacking the real intellectual—Bryan is a good example.

Clifton Fadiman

intellectual | ideologue

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who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery
to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and... - MORE who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery
to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children
brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain and drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

Allen Ginsberg

drugs

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Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is... - MORE Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.

Ernest Hemingway

sports

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The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show... - MORE The glare of that much-mentioned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order.

Philip Larkin

love | promises

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