The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by... the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Wit is a lean creature with sharp inquiring nose, whereas humor has a kindly eye and a comfortable girth. Wit, if it be necessary,... uses malice to score a point--like a cat it is quick to jump--but humor keeps the peace in an easy chair. Wit has a better voice in a solo, but humor comes into the chorus best. Wit is as sharp as a stroke of lightning, whereas humor is diffuse like sunlight. Wit keeps the season's fashions and is precise in the phrases and judgments of the day, but humor is concerned with homely eternal things. Wit wears silk, but humor in homely-spun endures the wind. Wit sets a snare, whereas humor goes off whistling without a victim in its mind. Wit is sharper company at the table, but humor serves better in mischance and in the rain. When it tumbles wit is sour, but humor goes uncomplaining without its dinner. Humor laughs at another's jest and holds its sides, while wit sits wrapped in study for a lively answer.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even assuming the possibility of greater knowledge among responsive young children of a mass media age, it is questionable whether... an increase in verbal knowledge and expression has much effect on the capacity for understanding in depth or on the style of behavior of children with no more than five years of living and growing behind them.... The drawings of contemporary fives are no more complex, the capacity for judgment no sharper, the feelings of helplessness when they get sick or into trouble no less painful than they have ever been, as far as we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and j...oy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a childLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If she must teem, Create her child of spleen, that it may live... And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth, With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks, Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt, that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt, that she may feel... How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The flags are natures newly found. Rifles grow sharper on the sight.... There is a rumble of autumnal marching, From which no soft sleeve relieves us. Fate is the present desperado.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) has often been compared to Socrates, and there are some striking resemblances--the trances of conc...entration they went into, the sharp questioning of those who professed to know, the search for purity of language and life. But the contrast is sharper than any such comparisons. Wittgenstein is a powerful example of the separation of modern philosophy from ordinary life, a separation he deeply regretted but could do little to remedy. Unlike Socrates, who engaged citizens in philosophical self-examination at public meeting places, Wittgenstein could not bring himself, very often, to meet with a small circle of students. He feared that not even those select Cambridge philosophers could understand him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »