For aesthetics is the mother of ethics.... Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their po...litical programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe--not empirically, alas, but only theoretically--that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had never learned to live without delight. And he would have to learn to, just as, in a Prohibition country, he supposed he wou...ld have to learn to live without sherry. Theoretically he knew that life is possible, may be even pleasant, without joy, without passionate griefs. But it had never occurred to him that he might have to live like that.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theore...tically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire i...nto extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Music, theoretically considered, consists altogether of lines of tone. It more nearly resembles a picture or an architectural draw...ing, than any other art creation; the difference being that in a drawing the lines are visible and constant, while in music they are audible and in motion. The separate tones are the points through which the lines are drawn; and the impression which is intended, and which is apprehended by the intelligent listener, is not that of single tones, but of continuous lines of tones, describing movements, curves and angles, rising, falling, poising--directly analogous to the linear impressions conveyed by a picture or drawing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Education at school continues what has been done at home: it crystallizes the optical illusion, consolidates it with book learning..., theoretically legitimizes the traditional trash and trains the children to know without understanding and to accept denominations for definitions. Astray in his conceptions, entangled in words, man loses the flair for truth, the taste for nature. What a powerful intellect must you possess, to be suspicious of this moral carbon dioxide and with your head swimming already, to hurl yourself out of it into the fresh air, with which, into the bargain, everyone round is trying to scare you!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Individualism, pushed to anarchy, in the family is as ill- founded theoretically and as mischievous practically as it is in the St...ate; while extreme regimentation is a certain means of either destroying self-reliance or of maddening to rebellion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is still theoretically possible; and as the test of belief is willingness t...o act, one may say that faith is the readiness to act in a cause the prosperous issue of which is not certified to us in advance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Theoretically, I grant you, there is no possibility of error in necessary reasoning. But to speak thus "theoretically," is to use ...language in a Pickwickian sense. In practice, and in fact, mathematics is not exempt from that liability to error that affects everything that man does.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move and... we live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »