We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its ow...n healing, that we might extract from life's very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order t...o extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but al...so as past, for its historical value. The same goes for the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty in which it may be clothed, but also from its essential quality of being present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Evil passions and evil inclinations are much more dangerous than evil books. The sensualist will extract poison from the purest pa...ge, the modest can blush without being corrupted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to... tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff of any degree of fineness; but nevertheles...s, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat- flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »