The general feeling was, and for a long time remained, that one had several children in order to keep just a few. As late as the s...eventeenth century . . . people could not allow themselves to become too attached to something that was regarded as a probable loss. This is the reason for certain remarks which shock our present-day sensibility, such as Montaigne's observation, "I have lost two or three children in their infancy, not without regret, but without great sorrow."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In general a thing is romantic when, as Aristotle would say, it is wonderful rather than probable; in other words, when it violate...s the normal sequence of cause and effect in favor of adventure. Here is the fundamental contrast between the words classic and romantic which meets us at the outset and in some form or other persists in all uses of the word down to the present day. A thing is romantic when it is strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique, etc. A thing is classical, on the other hand, when it is not unique, but representative of a class. In this sense, medical men may speak correctly of a classic case of typhoid fever, or a classic case of hysteria. One is even justified in speaking of a classic example of romanticism. By an easy extension of meaning a thing is classical when it belongs to a high class or to the best class.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates--the inhabitants of marketing zones in the con...sumer goods society, television audiences and news magazine readerships... vote with money at the cash counter rather than with the ballot paper at the polling booth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I read of the vain discussions of the present day about the Virgin Birth and other old dogmas which belong to the past, I fee...l how great the need is still of a real interest in the religion which builds up character, teaches brotherly love, and opens up to the seeker such a world of usefulness and the beauty of holiness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the most singular facts about the unwritten history of this country is the consummate ability with which Southern influence..., Southern ideas and Southern ideals, have from the very beginning even up to the present day, dictated to and domineered over the brain and sinew of this nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German Wo...rld knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathani...el Hawthorne.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has do...ne away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in ...bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless.... They have put into practise the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »