To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressi...vely diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The exercise of letters is sometimes linked to the ambition to contruct an absolute book, a book of books that includes the others... like a Platonic archetype, an object whose virtues are not diminished by the passage of time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her persona...lity, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A turkey is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world,... he has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A toothache, or a violent passion, is not necessarily diminished by our knowledge of its causes, its character, its importance or ...insignificance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Each man, if he attempts to join himself to others, is on all sides cramped and diminished of his proportion; and the stricter the... union, the smaller and the more pitiful he is. But leave him alone, to recognize in every hour and place the secret soul, he will go up and down doing the works of a true member, and, to the astonishment of all, the work will be done with concert, though no man spoke.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing.... The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A beautiful sentence is beautiful, and a beautiful flower is beautiful, but their duration is nearly the same--a day, a century. N...othing dies more quickly than a style that is not supported by the solidity of strong thought. It shrivels up like a slackened hide; it falls in a heap like a rotten vine deprived of the tree it entwines. And if someone says that the vine keeps a tree with withered roots from falling down, I would agree. Style is also a force, but its value is that much more quickly diminished when it exhausts itself in preserving from annihilation the fragility which it embraces and sustains.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During medieval times, all those emotions were missing which have made us cautious and tentative in matters of justice: the insigh...t into diminished capacity, the concept of judicial fallibility, the awareness that society has to share in the blame for the guilt of individuals, the question whether an individual ought not be rehabilitated rather than made to suffer. Or, perhaps, better stated: a vague sense of all this is not lacking, but rather concentrates itself, unverbalized, in instant impulses of charity and forgiveness, unconcerned with the issue of guilt, which could suddenly break through the cruel satisfaction over the administration of justice. While we administer a hesitant, toned down justice, partially filled with a guilty conscience, the Middle Ages knew only two extremes: the full measure of cruel punishment or mercy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »