Blake and Goethe were individualists par excellence, uncompromisingly protective of their single vision. In both Faust Part II and... The Four Zoas, emphasis on the universality of the poet's message contrasts with the resistant texture of a compressed style and the striking complexity of the mythological machinery. Blake likes to emphasize that he is not writing for the simple-minded; Goethe takes a teasing pleasure in keeping philologists busy. Faust and The Four Zoas are dramatic epics of Humanity, but embodied in a mythic language whose uniqueness and quirkiness are jealously guarded. Blake never published The Four Zoas, though it culminates his early prophecies and provides the indispensable key to the later ones. And Goethe refused to allow Faust Part II to be printed in its entirety until after his death. Both poets postponed the public's discovery of their central works; secrecy was enforced as long as it could be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Give up the belief that mind is, even temporarily, compressed within the skull, and you will quickly become more manly or womanly.... You will understand yourself and your Maker better than before.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to tak...e to pieces an entire universe.... A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wit is often concise and sparkling, compressed into an original pun or metaphor. Brevity is said to be its soul. Humor can be more... leisurely, diffused through a whole story or picture which undertakes to show some of the comic aspects of life. What it devalues may be human nature in general, by showing that certain faults or weaknesses are universal. As such it is kinder and more philosophic than wit which focuses on a certain individual, class, or social group.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Of all cursed places under the sun, where the hungriest soul can hardly pick up a few grains of knowledge, a girls' boarding- scho...ol is the worst. They are called finishing schools, and the name tells accurately what they are. They finish everything but imbecility and weakness, and that they cultivate. They are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move there--wide room. A woman who has been for many years at one of those places carries the mark of the beast on her till she dies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But I saw the little-Ant men as they ran Carrying the world's weight of the world's filth... And the filth in the heart of Man-- Compressed till those lusts and greeds had a greater heat than that of the Sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden with veils and masks; whether yoked with cows to draw the plow thr...ough its furrows, or classed with idiots, lunatics and criminals in the laws and constitutions of the State, the principle is the same; for the humiliations of the spirit are as real as the visible badges of servitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »