If a sound justification for most scientific activity is going to be found, it will eventually come perhaps from a recognition tha...t man's sense of curiosity about the world and himself is every bit as compelling as his need for clothing and food.... Making sense of the world and one's place in that world has roots deep within the human psyche.... We can drop the dangerous pretense that science is legitimate only in so far as it contributes to our material well-being or to our store of perennial truths. Viewed in this light, the repudiation of theoretical scientific inquiry is tantamount to a denial of what may be our most characteristically human trait.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and ...lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"What have I gained?" "Experience," said Holmes, laughing. "Indirectly it may be of value, you know; you have only to put it ...into words to gain the reputation of being excellent company for the remainder of your existence."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Byron's revealing line, "And if I laugh at any mortal thing, 'Tis that I may not weep," suggests that the comic sense is parasitic...al upon the tragic. In order to avoid our tragic encounters with the transitoriness of passing fact, the fading of beauty, the destructive consequences of moral evil, alienation from the primary source of value, we make fun. The making of fun where no real occasion for fun exists is essentially what comedy is about. Tragedy and comedy are, indeed, but two masks worn by the same character alternately, depending on the exigencies of the moment; that is, depending upon which mask best represents him in such a way as successfully to reduce the unacceptable tensions of his ambience. Thus the obvious truth of Socrates' argument at the end of the Symposium. Both tragedy and comedy are but one-sided expressions of the ironic sensibility.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul... in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith with its store of food and little cooking pans and change of clothes,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no s...tandard of value whatever is intact.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three.... The little advance... I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. I...ndeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases--that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For many are the trees of God that grow In Paradise, and various, yet unknown... To us; in such abundance lies our choice As leaves a greater store of fruit untouched, Still hanging incorruptible, till men Grow up to their provision, and more hands Help to disburden Nature of her bearth."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To love something as an artist ... means to be shaken not by its ultimate value or lack of value, but by a side of it that suddenl...y opens up. Where art has value it shows things that few have seen. It's conquering, not pacifying.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »