The radio ... goes on early in the morning and is listened to at all hours of the day, until nine, ten and often eleven o'clock in... the evening. This is certainly a sign that the grown-ups have infinite patience, but it also means that the power of absorption of their brains is pretty limited, with exceptions, of course--I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. One or two news bulletins would be ample per day! But the old geese, well--I've said my piece!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now the [Utah] Territory is virtually under the theocratic government of the Mormon Church. The union of church and state is compl...ete. The result is the usual one, the usurpation or absorption of all temporal authority and power by the church. Polygamy and every other evil sanctioned by the church is safe. To destroy the temporal power of the Mormon Church is the end in view.... Mormonism as a sectarian idea is nothing, but as a system of government it is our duty to deal with it as an enemy to our institutions, and its supporters and leaders as criminals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a character disorder, narcissism is the very opposite of strong self-love. Self-absorption does not produce gratification, it p...roduces injury to the self; erasing the line between self and other means that nothing new, nothing "other," ever enters the self; it is devoured and transformed until one thinks one can see oneself in the other--and then it becomes meaningless. This is why the clinical profile of narcissism is not of a state of activity, but of a state of being. There are erased the demarcations, limits, and forms of time as well as relationship. The narcissist is not hungry for experiences, he is hungry for Experience. Looking for an expression or reflection of himself in Experience, he devalues each particular interaction or scene, because it is never enough to encompass who he is. The myth of Narcissus neatly captures this: one drowns in the self--it is an entropic state.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both Hopkins and Lawrence were religious not just in the ritualistic sense but in the sense of being obsessed with the word--the w...ord made life and truth--with the need to invent a language as direct as religious utterance. Both were poets, but outside the literary fashions of their time. Both felt that among the poets of their time was an absorption in literary manners, fashions and techniques which separated the line of the writing from that of religious truth. Both felt that the modern situation imposed on them the necessity to express truth by means of a different kind of poetic writing from that used in past or present. Both found themselves driven into writing in a way which their contemporaries did not understand or respond to yet was inevitable to each in his pursuit of truth. Here of course there is a difference between Hopkins and Lawrence, because Hopkins in his art was perhaps over-worried, over-conscientious, whereas Lawrence was an instinctive poet who, in his concern for truth, understood little of the problems of poetic form, although he held strong views about them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
These philosophers dwell on the inevitability and unchangeableness of laws, on the power of temperament and constitution, the thre...e goon, or qualities, and the circumstances, or birth and affinity. The end is an immense consolation; eternal absorption in Brahma.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and sel...f-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In my case, self-absorption is completely justified. I have never discovered any other subject quite so worthy of my attention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During adolescence imagination is boundless. The urge toward self-perfection is at its peak. And with all their self- absorption a...nd personalized dreams of glory, youth are in pursuit of something larger than personal passions, some values or ideals to which they might attach their imaginations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »