Human visual perception is a far more complex and selective process than that by which a film records. Nevertheless the camera len...s and the eye both register images--because of their sensitivity to light--at great speed and in the face of an immediate event. What the camera does, however, and what the eye in itself can never do is to fix the appearance of that event. It removes its appearance from the flow of appearances and it preserves it, not perhaps forever but for as long as the film exists. The essential character of this preservation is not dependent upon the image being static; unedited film rushes preserve in essentially the same way. The camera saves a set of appearances from the otherwise inevitable supercession of further appearances. It holds them unchanging. And before the invention of the camera nothing could do this, except, in the mind's eye, the faculty of memory.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us note here that the same formal analysis ... applies to scientific prediction as well as to explanation. The difference betw...een the two is of a pragmatic character. If E is given, i.e., if we know that the phenomenon described by E has occurred, and a suitable set of statements C1, C2, ... Ck, L1, L2, ... Lr is provided afterwards, we speak of an explanation of the phenomenon in question. If the latter statements are given and E is derived prior to the occurrence of the phenomenon it describes, we speak of a prediction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The motive of the drama of human life is the necessity, laid upon every man who comes into the world, of discovering the mean betw...een self-assertion and self-restraint suited to his character and his circumstances. And the eternally tragic aspect of the drama lies in this: that the problem set before us is one the elements of which can be but imperfectly known, and of which even an approximately right solution rarely presents itself, until that stern critic, aged experience, has been furnished with ample justification for venting his sarcastic humor upon the irreparable blunders we have already made.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dating at least from ancient Rome, the holiday was a time of public and communal celebration, a time to commemorate some event of ...civic or religious significance that all citizens participated in equally. The set of holidays observed by a given community was a way of defining that community. Each holiday, with its unique history and set of rituals, connected the members of a community to one another, and to the community's collective past. The holiday was fundamentally noneconomic in character. Everyone participated, independent of economic circumstances.... In contrast, the vacation is thoroughly private and economic. People negotiate for paid vacations with their employers. They decide whether to spend their money on vacations or on things, in a way that they never would with holidays. Imagine asking whether to buy a new car or celebrate Easter. The point of a vacation is not to join in celebration with other members of the community but to escape it--at least for a while. People take vacations for a change of scene, and they take them alone, or just with their families.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every actor and musician has a text upon which to base his art, but he can treat the text in one of two ways. The difference lies ...in how much the performer believes his own work can be "notated." In music, this means asking how far the system of musical signs printed on the page can actually represent the music the composer heard in his head. If you believe these signs--the notes, the loud and soft markings, tempo indications--are an adequate language, then in performing the piece you concentrate on realizing in sound what you, the performer, read. If you believe music cannot be adequately notated, then your task in the performance is to find what is missing from the printed page. The actor has a similar choice. He can treat the text either as a set of suggestions for a character in Shakespeare's or Ibsen's mind, suggestions which cannot be ignored, but leave him much freedom, or he can treat the text as bible which, once understood, will tell him how to act.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Surely, 'tis one step towards acting well, to think worthily of our nature; and as in common life, the way to make a man honest, i...s, to suppose him so ... so here, to set some value upon ourselves, enables us to support the character ... of generosity and virtue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New England likes to think it has a civilization based on character. The South likes to think it has a character based on civiliza...tion. A big difference.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the midd...le and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »