Still, I'm much happier here, really in it than I've been for an age. People don't hate much at the front; there's no one to hate,... except the poor devils across the way, whom they [the French soldiers] know to be as miserable as themselves. They don't talk hypocritical bosh about the beauty & manliness of war: they feel in their souls that if they weren't cowards they would have ended the thing long ago--by going home, where they want to be. And lastly and best, they don't jabber about atrocities--of course, everyone commits them--though about one story in a million that reaches our blessed Benighted States is true.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted b...y audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator's lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Popular art is dominated throughout by the star system, not only in its actors but in all its elements, whatever the medium. Every... work of art, to be sure, has its dominant elements, to which the rest are subordinate. But in popular art it is the dominant ones alone that are the objects of interest, the ground of its satisfaction. By contrast, great art is in this sense pointless; everything in it is significant, everything makes its own contribution to the aesthetic substance. The domain of popular art is, paradoxically, an aristocracy, as it were: some few elements are singled out as the carriers of whatever meaning the work has while the rest are submerged into an anonymous mass. The life of the country is reduced to the mannered gestures of its king. It is this that gives the effect of simplification and standardization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mot...her fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
At my nativity The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes... Of burning cressets, and at my birth The frame and huge foundation of the earth Shaked like a coward.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself,... An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The LORD went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give ...them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »