Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields o...f activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into wo...rds? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you, that speak of God's personality?... Yet we have a sort of family history of our God,--so have the Tahitians of theirs,--and some old poet's grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlasting truth, and God's own word. Pythagoras says, truly enough, "A true assertion respecting God is an assertion of God"; but we may well doubt if there is any example of this in literature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Listen. We converse as we live--by repeating, by combining and recombining a few elements over and over again just as nature does ...when of elementary particles it builds a world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have been required to put roots and shoots and little stems and tendrils together much as their author did, to wander discourage...d and confused as Hansel and Gretel through a dark wood of witches, to strike the hot right way suddenly, but just as suddenly to mire, to drag, to speed, to shout Urreek! to fall asleep, to submit to revelations, certainly to curl a lip, to doubt, unnose a disdainful snort, snick a superior snicker, curse, and then at some point not very pleasantly to realize that the game I'm playing is the game of creation itself, because Tender Buttons is above all a book of kits like those from which harpsichords or paper planes or model bottle boats are fashioned, with intricacy no objection, patience a demand, unreadable plans a pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poets were not alone in sanctioning myths, for long before the poets the states and the lawmakers had sanctioned them as a use...ful expedient.... They needed to control the people by superstitious fears, and these cannot be aroused without myths and marvels.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived ...clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art--the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting--is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, w...hich has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D.C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »