If we have largely forgotten the physical discomforts of the itching, oppressive garments of the past ... then we have mercifully ...forgotten, too, the smells of the past, the domestic odours--ill-washed flesh; infrequently changed underwear; chamber-pots; slop-pails; inadequately plumbed privies; rotting food; unattended teeth; and the streets are no fresher than indoors, the omnipresent acridity of horse piss and dung, drains, the sudden stench of old death from butchers' shops, the amniotic horror of the fishmonger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel ... will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but p...lace now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Duccio came not by usura nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura... nor was 'La Calunnia' painted. Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis, Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We of the sinking middle class ... may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we... get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Death does determine life.... Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is sus...pended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »