Probability but no truth, facility but no freedom--it is owing to these two fruits that the tree of knowledge cannot be confused w...ith the tree of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here was a big constructive imagination; here was a mere doctor laying bare the origins of Greek drama as no classical scholar had... ever done, teaching the anthropologist what was really meant by his totem and taboo, probing the mysteries of sin, of sanctity, of sacrament--a man who, because he understood, purged the human spirit from fear. I have no confidence in psycho-analysis as a method of therapeutics ... but I am equally sure that for generations almost every branch of human knowledge will be enriched and illumined by the imagination of Freud.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spo...ntaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relation ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration). Lovemaking cannot be totally classical unless it is also totally baroque, since you cannot abandon all restraints and so attain a classical intensity. In practice, however, most people are more inclined to one mode than to the other. A very classical person will be incompatible with a very baroque person unless each can bring out the other's latent opposite side. Two people who are very one-sided in the same direction can be extremely compatible but risk missing a whole dimension of experience unless they get so deeply into one mode that it becomes the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My verse forms are relatively traditional (traditions alter). In general they have moved away from strict classical patterns in th...e direction of greater freedom--as is usual with most artists learning a trade. It takes courage, however, to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space. I still await that confidence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In Woolstonecraft's page, BRIDGET BEARWELL was skill'd... And her fancy with novel inventions was fill'd But Bridget improv'd on Miss Wool- stonecraft's plan, And projected some small revolution in man. "Tis plain," she exclaim'd, "that the sexes should share, In each other's employments, amusements and care. I'm taught in man's duties and honors to join, And, therefore, let man be partaker of mine: Since to share with my husband in logic I'm fit In classical lore, mathematics, and wit; In return, he shall yield the pot, kettle, and ladle, And unite in the charge of the kitchen and cradle."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The new always happens against the overwhelming odds of statistical laws and their probability, which for all practical, everyday ...purposes amounts to certainty; the new therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am looking over Self Control again, & my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written... Work, without anything of Nature or Probability in it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears ...>to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In general a thing is romantic when, as Aristotle would say, it is wonderful rather than probable; in other words, when it violate...s the normal sequence of cause and effect in favor of adventure. Here is the fundamental contrast between the words classic and romantic which meets us at the outset and in some form or other persists in all uses of the word down to the present day. A thing is romantic when it is strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique, etc. A thing is classical, on the other hand, when it is not unique, but representative of a class. In this sense, medical men may speak correctly of a classic case of typhoid fever, or a classic case of hysteria. One is even justified in speaking of a classic example of romanticism. By an easy extension of meaning a thing is classical when it belongs to a high class or to the best class.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Tyranny produces two results, exactly opposite in character, and which are symbolized in those two great types of the slave in cla...ssical times--Epictetus and Spartacus. The one is hatred with its evil train, the other meekness with its Christian graces.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »