My verse forms are relatively traditional (traditions alter). In general they have moved away from strict classical patterns in th...e direction of greater freedom--as is usual with most artists learning a trade. It takes courage, however, to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space. I still await that confidence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative... dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At man's core there is a voice that wants him never to give in to fear. But if it is true that in general man cannot give in to fe...ar, at the very least he postpones indefinitely the moment when he will have to confront himself with the object of his fear ... when he will no longer have the assistance of reason as guaranteed by God, or when he will no longer have the assistance of God such as reason guaranteed. It is necessary to recoil, but it is necessary to leap, and perhaps one only recoils in order to leap better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The being who, for most men, is the source of the most lively, and even, be it said, to the shame of philosophical delights, the m...ost lasting joys; the being towards or for whom all their efforts tend ... for whom and by whom fortunes are made and lost; for whom, but especially by whom, artists and poets compose their most delicate jewels; from whom flow the most enervating pleasures and the most enriching sufferings--woman, in a word, is not, for the artist in general ... only the female of the human species. She is rather a divinity, a star.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of t...rance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In general I do not draw well with literary men--not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised... their last publication.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most ...enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, &c. prove it abundantly.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »