We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes. ...For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mozart has the classic purity of light and the blue ocean; Beethoven the romantic grandeur which belongs to the storms of air and ...sea, and while the soul of Mozart seems to dwell on the ethereal peaks of Olympus, that of Beethoven climbs shuddering the storm-beaten sides of a Sinai. Blessed be they both! Each represents a moment of the ideal life, each does us good. Our love is due to both.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I thus could not live, and I admitted it, unless on the entire earth, all creatures, or at least the greatest number, were turned ...toward me, eternally vacant, deprived of an independent life, ready at any moment to respond to my call, given to sterility until the day I deigned to grace them with my light. In short, for me to live happily, it was necessary for those chosen by me not to live at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the hi...gh fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share--black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The photographic enthusiast likes to lure us into a darkened room in order to display his slides on a silver screen. Aided by the ...adaptability of the eye and by the borrowed light from the intense projector bulb, he can achieve those relationships in brightness that will make us dutifully admire the wonderful autumn tints he photographed on his latest trip. As soon as we look at a print of these photographs by day, the light seems to go out of them. It is one of the miracles of art that the same does not happen there. The paintings in our galleries are seen one day in bright sunshine and another day in the dim light of a rainy afternoon, yet they remain the same paintings, ever faithful, ever convincing. To a marvelous extent they carry their own light within. For their truth is not that of a perfect replica, it is the truth of art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[T]hat moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of nig...ht neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The man who busies himself overmuch with the workings of his own soul cannot help being confronted by a common, melancholy, but ra...ther curious phenomenon: namely, he witness the sudden death of an insignificant memory that a chance occasion causes to be brought back from the humble and remote almshouse where it had been completing quietly its obscure existence. It blinks, it is still pulsating and reflecting light--but the next moment, under your very eyes, it breathes one last time and turns up its poor toes, having not withstood the too abrupt transit into the harsh glare of the present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was at that moment, just after Krug had fallen through the bottom of a confused dream and sat up on the straw with a gasp--and ...just before his reality, his remembered hideous misfortune could pounce upon him--it was then that I felt a pang of pity for Adam and slid towards him along an inclined beam of pale light--causing instantaneous madness, but at least saving him from the senseless agony of his logical fate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »