All children's books are about ideals. Adult fiction sets out to portray and then explain the world as it really is; books for chi...ldren present it as it should be. Child readers come to them hoping for a certain amount of instruction, but chiefly for stories in which the petty restrictions of ordinary life are removed: they want to encounter people who can fly, geese that lay golden eggs, frogs that turn into princes, spaceships piloted by children, anything that measures up to their ideals of adventure and imagination. Adults, on the other hand, are more likely to want to feed the children a set of moral examples. By all means, let them have their fun, but the opportunity of providing models of ideal behaviour is not to be wasted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute.... 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The architect ... has something in common with the landscape gardener. Everyone can grasp the fact that the gardener's success dep...ends on whether or not the plants he selects for the garden thrive there. No matter how beautiful his conception of a garden may be it will, nevertheless, be a failure if it is not the right environment for the plants, if they cannot flourish in it. The architect, too, works with living things--with human beings, who are much more incalculable than plants. If they cannot thrive in his house its apparent beauty will be of no avail--without life it becomes a monstrosity. It will be neglected, fall into disrepair and change into something quite different from what he intended. Indeed, one of the proofs of good architecture is that it is being utilized as the architect had planned.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Architecture is a chained and fettered art. Far from being "frozen music," it is an art constantly attempting to realize in solid,... stable form those effects which music is able to conjure up in an instant--effects which succeed each other rapidly during the progress of a musical work. Music can attain the colossal in a way which, in architecture, only the rarest opportunities render even remotely possible. Music can, in a few moments, admit us through vast portals into avenues, courts and halls of infinite extent and variety. Music can suddenly raise up an entire structure and, by the device of modulation, lift it on to a podium, abruptly recess its facades and turn them bodily into the sunshine. Music can etch silhouettes ten times more intricate than those of Dresden or London City, repeat them, increase or reduce them, hurl them into the distance or bring them before us in precise detail. Most of the essentials of architecture--mass, rhythm, texture, outline--are within music's power. Almost, the two arts are the same art, the one able to express nearly everything which the imagination is capable of conceiving, the other bound by the rigours of economy and use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Among families, so rich as to be above labour, the daughters are hurried through the routine of boarding school instruction, and a...t an early period introduced into the gay world; and, thenceforth, their only object is amusement.--Mark the different treatment, which the sons of these families receive. While their sisters are gliding through the mazes of the midnight dance, they employ the lamp, to treasure up for future use the riches of ancient wisdom; or to gather strength and expansion of the mind, in exploring the wonderful paths of philosophy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is where life is fundamental and free that men develop the vision needed to reveal the human soul in the blossoms it puts forth....... In a great workshop like Chicago this creative power germinates, even though the brutality and selfish preoccupation of the place drive it elsewhere for bread. Men of this type have loved Chicago, have worked for her, and believed in her. The hardest thing they have to bear is her shame. These men could live and work here when to live and work in New York would stifle their genius and fill their purse.... New York still believes that art should be imported; brought over in ships; and is a quite contented market place. So while New York has reproduced much and produced nothing, Chicago's achievements in architecture have gained world-wide recognition as a distinctively American architecture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »