For those for whom the sex act has come to seem mechanical and merely the meeting and manipulation of body parts, there often rema...ins a hunger which can be called metaphysical but which is not recognized as such, and which seeks satisfaction in physical danger, or sometimes in torture, suicide, or murder.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Supposing the Mechanical Phase to have lasted 300 years, from 1600 to 1900, the next or Electric Phase would have a life equal to ...(the square root of 300), or about seventeen years and a half, when--that is, in 1917Mit would pass into another or Ethereal Phase, which, for half a century, science has been promising, and which would last only (the square root of 17.5), or about four years, and bring Thought to the limit of its possibilities in the year 1921. It may well be!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why do our bodies wear out? Why can't we just go on and on and on, accumulating a potentially infinite number of Frequent Flyer mi...leage points? These are the kinds of questions that philosophers have been asking ever since they realized that being a philosopher did not involve any heavy lifting. And yet the answer is really very simple. Our bodies are mechanical devices, they break down. Some devices, such as battery-operated toys costing $39.95, break down almost instantly upon exposure to the Earth's atmosphere. Other devices, such as stereo systems owned by your next-door neighbor's 13-year-old son who likes to listen to bands with names like "Nerve Damage," at a volume capable of disintegrating limestone, will continue to function perfectly for many years, even if you hit them with an ax. But the fundamental law of physics is that sooner or later every mechanism ceases to function for one reason or another, and it is never covered under the warranty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a popular superstition that "realism" asserts itself in the cataloguing of a great number of material objects, in explain...ing mechanical processes, the methods of operating manufactories and trades, and in minutely and unsparingly describing physical sensations. But is not realism, more than it is anything else, an attitude of mind on the part of the writer toward his material, a vague indication of the sympathy and candour with which he accepts, rather than chooses, his theme?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and ...treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.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 »
The stuff of which tragedy and comedy are made is the same stuff. The foibles of mankind work up more easily into comedy than into... tragedy, and this is the chief difference between the two. We readily understand the Nemesis of temperament, the fatality of character, when it is exposed on a small scale. This is the business of comedy; and we do not here require the labored artifice of gods, mechanical plot, and pointed allegory to make us realize the moral. But in tragedy we have the large scale to deal with. A tragedy is always the same thing. It is a world of complicated and traditional stage devices for making us realize the helplessness of mankind before destiny. We are told from the start to expect the worst: there is going to be suffering, and the suffering is going to be logical, inevitable, necessary. There is also an implication to be conveyed that this suffering is somehow in accord with the moral constitution of the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
New York is more now than the sum of its people and buildings. It makes sense only as a mechanical intelligence, a transporter sys...tem for the daily absorbing and nightly redeploying of the human multitudes whose services it requires.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are caught up Mr. Perry on a great wave whether we will or no, a great wave of expansion and progress. All these mechanical inv...entions--telephones, electricity, steel bridges, horseless vehicles--they are all leading somewhere. It's up to us to be on the inside in the forefront of progress.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I remain self-possessed Except when a street-piano, mechanical and tired... Reiterates some worn-out common song With the smell of hyacinths across the garden Recalling things that other people have desired. Are these ideas right or wrong?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »