We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its ow...n healing, that we might extract from life's very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order t...o extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The past is interesting not only for the beauty which the artists for whom it was the present were able to extract from it, but al...so as past, for its historical value. The same goes for the present. The pleasure which we derive from the representation of the present is due not only to the beauty in which it may be clothed, but also from its essential quality of being present.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the devil were to offer me a resurgence of what is commonly called virility, I'd decline. "Just keep my liver and lungs in good... working order," I'd reply, "so I can go on drinking and smoking!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and ...lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a televion set.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Evil passions and evil inclinations are much more dangerous than evil books. The sensualist will extract poison from the purest pa...ge, the modest can blush without being corrupted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to... tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety... On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained In the hollow round of my skull. And God said Shall these bones live? shall these Bones live?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »