The function of the hero in art is to inspire the reader or spectator to continue in the same spirit from where he, the hero, leav...es off. He must release the spectator's potentiality, for potentiality is the historic force behind nobility. And to do this the hero must be typical of the characters and class who at that time only need to be made aware of their heroic potentiality in order to be able to make their society juster and nobler. Bourgeois culture is no longer capable of producing heroes. On the highbrow level it only produces characters who are embodied consolations for defeat, and on the lowbrow level it produces idols--stars, TV "personalities," pin-ups. The function of the idol is the exact opposite to that of the hero. The idol is self-sufficient; the hero never is. The idol is so superficially desirable, spectacular, witty, happy that he or she merely supplies a context for fantasy and therefore, instead of inspiring, lulls. The idol is based on the appearance of perfection; but never on the striving towards it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some p...hysical aid to their moral consolations--wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It seems to me that your doctor [Tronchin] is more of a philosopher than a physician. As for me, I much prefer a doctor who is an ...optimist and who gives me remedies that will improve my health. Philosophical consolations are, after all, useless against real ailments. I know only two kinds of sickness--physical and moral: all the others are purely in the imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being s...o impoverished which are given to those of us who don't sell anything to anybody.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively.... But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensin...g with it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, dea...th is the obsene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was... In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »