The distinction between the two types of art is a difference of density rather than of species. In the same number of bars of Beet...hoven and Sousa, there is, in Beethoven, more of the essence of music, giving a thicker, more intense effect likely to alienate the unfamiliar listener by "boring" him, just as the palate accustomed to that richer food is bored by the thinness of the popular tune. The feeling that this is not the only difference is due to the fact that as an art grows more and more complex and dense, the number of relations among simple elements increases until those relations look like extraordinarily refined experiences denied to the common herd. Yet there is no real barrier to be leaped over by an effort of genius between understanding a "vulgar" dance tune and a Beethoven symphony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In many ways chess ... is very like philosophy. Both have long histories which most practitioners are aware of and frequently cons...ult. The chess master is just as likely to be found replaying the past games of Morphy and Capablanca as the modern philosopher is to be found rehearsing the arguments of Descartes and Kant. Further, chess games, like philosophical problems, can often be sufficiently complex to defy complete analysis. It has been calculated that after only two full moves 71,852 legal positions can be reached, while the number of distinct forty-move games is the colossal figure of 25 x 10115. Chess is also similar to philosophy in possessing a number of long-standing unsolved problems. There is for white, however expert, no opening which will guarantee victory, and no response from black which can be relied upon to preserve him from defeat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My idea is that the world outside--the so-called modern world--can only pervert and degrade the conceptions of the primitive insti...nct of art and feeling, and that our only chance is to accept the limited number of survivors--the one- in-a-thousand of born artists and poets--and to intensify the energy of feeling within that radiant centre.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[The] elderly and timid single gentleman in Paris ... never drove down the Champs Elysees without expecting an accident, and commo...nly witnessing one; or found himself in the neighborhood of an official without calculating the chances of a bomb. So long as the rates of progress held good, these bombs would double in force and number every ten years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our Sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses. It fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas, converse...s with its Objects at the greatest Distance, and continues the longest in Action without being tired or satiated with its proper Enjoyments. The Sense of Feeling can indeed give us a Notion of Extension, Shape, and all other Ideas that enter at the Eye, except Colours; but at the same time it is very much straightened and confined in its Operations, to the Number, Bulk, and Distance of its particular Objects. Our Sight seems designed to supply all these Defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of Touch, that spreads its self over an infinite Multitude of Bodies, comprehends the largest Figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote Parts of the Universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As Jerome expanded, its chances for the title, "the toughest little town in the West," increased and when it was incorporated in 1...899 the citizens were able to support the claim by pointing to the number of thick stone shutters on the fronts of all saloons, gambling halls, and other places of business for protection against gunfire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Across Parker Avenue from the fort is the Site of the Old Gallows, where 83 men "stood on nothin', a-lookin' up a rope." The platf...orm had a trap wide enought to "accommodate" 12 men, but half that number was the highest ever reached. On two occasions six miscreants were executed. There were several groups of five, some quartets and trios.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can b...ring to bear on the same topic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Human beings are distinguished by a capacity for experience as well as by their behavior, and homosexuality is as much a matter of... emotion as of genital manipulation.... As we each examine our own sense of identity we realize how much more complex is the question of homosexuality than a mere Kinsey-like computation of orgasms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »