Crosby's fans talk about how "relaxed" he was, how "natural," how "casual and easygoing." By the time Presley began causing sensat...ions, the entire country had become relaxed, casual and easygoing, and its younger people seemed to be tired of it, for Elvis's act was anything but soothing and scarcely what a parent of that placid age would have called "natural" for a young man. Elvis was unseemly, loud, gaudy, sexual--that gyrating pelvis!--in short, disturbing. He not only disturbed parents who thought music was a soothing by Crosby, but also reminded their young that they were full of the turmoil of youth and an appetite for excitement. At a time when the country had a population coming of age with no memory of troubled times, Presley spoke to a yearning for disturbance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, but it is dirty! Mthis little filling station,... oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Father Latour judged that, just as it was the white man's way to assert himself in any landscape, to change it, make it over a lit...tle (at least to leave some mark of memorial of his sojourn), it was the Indian's way to pass through a country without disturbing anything; to pass and leave no trace, like fish through the water, or birds through the air. It was the Indian manner to vanish into the landscape, not to stand out against it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What makes the race analogy complicated is that gays, as demographic composites, do indeed "have it better" than blacks--and yet i...n many ways contemporary homophobia is more virulent than contemporary racism. According to one monitoring group, one in four gay men has been physically assaulted as a result of his perceived sexual orientation; about fifty percent have been threatened with violence. (For lesbians, the incidence is lower but still disturbing.) A moral consensus now exists in this country that discriminating against blacks as teachers, priests, or tenants is simply wrong. (That doesn't mean it doesn't happen.) For much of the country, however, the moral legitimacy of homosexuals, remains very much in question.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To brew up an adult, it seems that some leftover childhood must be mixed in; a little unfinished business from the past periodical...ly intrudes on our adult life, confusing our relationships and disturbing our sense of self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior ...to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgement.... Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the theater one must sit in such a way that one sees the audience as a dark mass. Then it cannot bother one more than it does a...n actor. Nothing is more disturbing than being able to distinguish individuals in the crowd.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I did not lose my Sirian perspectives, the Sirian scope of time and space. But I was inside, too, this civilisation's view of itse...lf as all there was of the known world--for on its edges were, to the north, the threatening horsemen, to the northwest, very far away, dark forests full of barbarians whom these people scarcely accounted as human at all, believing them not much more than beasts--and from their point of view, accurately--... The world as understood by this great and powerful Queen was, though it stretched from one end of the main landmass to the other, circumscribed indeed, and the stars that roofed it were understood only--and to a limited extend--by their influences on their movements ... on our movements ... an odd, a startling, a disturbing, clash of focusses and perspectives encompassed me; and as for the historical aspect, this queen knew the story of her own civilisation and some legends, mostly inaccurate, of a "distant" past, which to me, and my mind, was virtually contemporary with her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we ask ourselves what is this wisdom which experience forces upon us, the answer must be that we discover the world is not cons...tituted as we had supposed it to be. It is not that we learn more about its physical elements, or its geography, or the variety of its inhabitants, or the ways in which human society is governed. Knowledge of this sort can be taught to a child without in any way disturbing his childishness. In fact, all of us are aware that we once knew a great many things which we have since forgotten. The essential discovery of maturity has little if anything to do with information about the names, the locations, and the sequence of facts; it is the acquiring of a different sense of life, a different kind of intuition about the nature of things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »