Thus I believe that without doing violence to the ancient doctrine of the Chinese, one can say that the Li has been brought by the... perfection of its nature to choose, from several possibilities, the most appropriate; and that by this means it has produced the Ki (Ch'i) or matter with dispositions such that all the rest has come about by natural propensities, in the same way that Monsieur Descartes claims to bring forth the present order of the world as a consequence of a small number of initially generated assumptions. Thus the Chinese, far from being blameworthy, merit praise for their ideas of things being created by their natural propensity and by a pre-established harmony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since I am upon this Subject, I must observe that our English Poets have succeeded much better in the Stile, than in the Sentiment...s of their Tragedies. Their Language is very often noble and sonorous, but the sense either very trifling or very common. On the contrary, in the ancient Tragedies, and indeed in those of Corneille and Racine, tho' the Expressions are very great, it is the Thought that bears them up and swells them. For my own part, I prefer a noble Sentiment that is depressed with homely Language, infinitely before a vulgar one that is blown up with all the Sound and Energy of Expression. Whether this Defect in our Tragedies may arise from Want of Genius, Knowledge, or Experience in the Writers, or from their Compliance with the vicious Taste of their Readers, who are better Judges of the Language than of the Sentiments, and consequently relish the one more than the other, I cannot determine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you!... The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bourgeois stands like a question mark, Speechless, like the hungry cur,... The ancient world stands there behind him, A mongrel dog, afraid to stir.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How natural that the errors of the ancient should be handed down and, mixing with the principles and system which Christ taught, g...ive to us an adulterated Christianity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from t...hat tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is--One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She carries a book but it is not the tome of the ancient wisdom,... the pages, I imagine, are the blank pages of the unwritten volume of the new.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of ...doom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-dest...ruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »