I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired ...of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word "culture" used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Culture, then, is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an... inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, ...thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been erod...ed by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cann...ot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels o...ut of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not approve the extermination of the enemy; the policy of exterminating or, as it is barbarously said, liquidating enemies, i...s one of the most alarming developments of modern war and peace, from the point of view of those who desire the survival of culture. One needs the enemy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He only is a well-made man who has a good determination. And the end of culture is not to destroy this, God forbid! but to train a...way all impediment and mixture and leave nothing but pure power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more i...n his public, than in his private quality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »