The human condition is such that pain and effort are not just symptoms which can be removed without changing life itself; they are... the modes in which life itself, together with the necessity to which it is bound, makes itself felt. For mortals, the "easy life of the gods" would be a lifeless life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A lifeless planet. And yet, yet still serving a useful purpose, I hope. Yes, a sun. Warming the surface of some other world. Givin...g light to those who may need it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may climb into the thin and cold realm of pure geometry and lifeless science, or sink into that of sensation. Between these ext...remes is the equator of life, of thought, or spirit, or poetry,--a narrow belt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but ...a goldsmith's.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Babylon," exclaimed Rolf, who had to look down again and again at this net of shimmering strings of beads, this skein of light, t...his endless flowerbed of electric blossoms ... this labyrinth of rectangular windows threaded by gleaming canals, which is repeated over and over again with no change,... half order as though on a chessboard, half confusion, as though the Milky Way had fallen down from the sky ... a mosaic of colored fragments, but mobile, yet at the same time lifeless and cold as glass, then again the Bengal lights of a stage witches' sabbath,... an orgy of discord, of harmony, an orgy of the everyday, technological and mercantile above all; you immediately think of the Arabian Nights.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the pile...s of dry dust in a school history book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A picture wants solidity, a statue wants colour. But we see the want of colour as a palpably glaring defect, and we do not see the... want of solidity, the effects of which to the spectator are supplied by light and shadow. A picture is as perfect an imitation of nature as is conveyed by a looking-glass; which is all that the eye can require, for it is all it can take in for the time being. A fine picture resembles a real living man; the finest statue in the world can only resemble a man turned to stone. The one is an image, the other a cold abstraction of nature. It leaves out half the visible impression.... It appears to me that sculpture, though not proper to express health or life or motion, accords admirably with the repose of the tomb; and that it cannot be better employed than in arresting the fleeting dust in imperishable forms, and in embodying a lifeless shadow. Painting, on the contrary, from what I have seen of it in Catholic countries, seems to be out of its place on the walls of churches; it has a flat and flimsy effect contrasted with the solidity of the building, and its rich flaunting colours harmonize but ill with solemnity of the surrounding scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I almost think we're all of us Ghosts, Pastor Manders. It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that "walks..." in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see Ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be Ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There in the twilight cold and gray, Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,... And from the sky, serene and far, A voice fell, like a falling star, Excelsior!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »