For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and sig...nificant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our Sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our Senses. It fills the Mind with the largest Variety of Ideas, converse...s with its Objects at the greatest Distance, and continues the longest in Action without being tired or satiated with its proper Enjoyments. The Sense of Feeling can indeed give us a Notion of Extension, Shape, and all other Ideas that enter at the Eye, except Colours; but at the same time it is very much straightened and confined in its Operations, to the Number, Bulk, and Distance of its particular Objects. Our Sight seems designed to supply all these Defects, and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of Touch, that spreads its self over an infinite Multitude of Bodies, comprehends the largest Figures, and brings into our reach some of the most remote Parts of the Universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The twelve Cells for Incorrigibles ... are also carved out of the solid rock hill. On the walls of one of the cells human "liberty..." is clearly inscribed, with the "liberty" in significant quotation marks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like figures on an ancient clock, Warrior, or saint, or clown... (All's one to the machine) that wake When each stale hour is done, And with preliminary whirr Play their allotted role, Stiffly advance, engage, retire Trembling a little still, So blandly nodding Death and I Nearer and nearer march, At the click of night and the click of day, -- Click-clack! We approach, we approach!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between... our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as a chemist "isolates" a substance from contaminations that distort his view of its nature and effects, so the work of art p...urifies significant appearance. It presents abstract themes in their generality, but not reduced to diagrams.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then t...he best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile o...f their own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke... As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »