Allusion has been made to [Proust's] contempt for the literature that "describes," for the realists and naturalists worshipping th...e offal of experience, prostrate before the epidermis and the swift epilepsy, and content to transcribe the surface, the façade, behind which the Idea is prisoner.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So all that is said of the wise man by Stoic or Oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his ...unattained but attainable self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit ...a single object.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I got it! The lead, the idea, the angle. It's the way, it's the only way. I'll, I'll be Jewish.... I've even got the title: "I Was... Jewish For Six Months."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Brutes gaze on sights, they are arrested by sounds; and what they see and what they hear are sights and sounds only. The intellect... of man, on the contrary, energises as well as his eye or ear, and perceives in sights or sounds something beyond them. It seizes and unites what the senses present to it; it grasps and forms what need not be seen or heard except in detail. It discerns in lines and colors, or in tones, what is beautiful and what is not. It gives them a meaning, and invests them with an idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When an idea is just rising on the horizon, the soul's temperature with respect to it is usually very cold. Only gradually does th...e idea develop its warmth, and it is hottest (which is to say, exerting its greatest influence) when belief in the idea is already once again in decline.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The preacher then went on to criticise the attitude of religion towards science. "If there is still a feeling of hostility between... them ... it is no longer the fault of religion. There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is so no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea,--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody,--I AM!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »