A nation is not a person, but it manifests certain personal traits, especially since it is a more organic phenomenon than a state.... Its character traits are nothing more and nothing less than tendencies: but these tendencies underlie, and on occasion supersede, other tendencies, other historical conditions. They are manifest in the history of politics: consider, for example, the differences between Russian and Polish and Yugoslav Communists. They are evident in the historical development of societies: consider, for example, the difference between English and Italian industrial workers, or between French bourgeois and Austrian Burger. They are obvious in the historical unfolding of art: consider, for example, the differences between South German and South Italian baroque, or between German and Spanish "Victorian" architecture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its mo...ist brilliance on another human creature!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be... accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I believe that organic sex, body against body, skin area against skin area, is becoming no longer possible, simply because if anyt...hing is to have any meaning for us it must take place in terms of the values and experiences of the media landscape.... What we're getting is a whole new order of sexual fantasies, involving a different order of experiences, like car crashes, like travelling in jet aircraft, the whole overlay of new technologies, architecture, interior design, communications, transport, merchandising. These things are beginning to reach into our lives and change the interior design of our sexual fantasies. We've got to recognize that what one sees through the window of the TV screen is as important as what one sees through a window on the street.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania... assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value.... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The vulgar look upon a man, who is reckoned a fine speaker, as a phenomenon, a supernatural being, and endowed with some peculiar ...gift of Heaven; they stare at him, if he walks in the park, and cry, that is he. You will, I am sure, view him in a juster light, and nulla formidine. You will consider him only as a man of good sense, who adorns common thoughts with the graces of elocution, and the elegancy of style. The miracle will then cease.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
And what if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely framed,... That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. "I'll tell you what, sir," he said; "the talent of this child ...is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir--seen--to be ever so faintly appreciated."... The infant phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same age--not perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »