We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or ...another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall--which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that ca...n at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The line it is drawn The curse it is cast... The slow one now Will later be fast As the present now Will later be past The order is Rapidly fadin'. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin'.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptac...le in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are times when they seem so small! And then again, although they never seem large, there is a vastness behind them, a past o...f indefinite complexity and marvel, an amazing power of absorbing and assimilating, which forces one to suspect some power in the race so different from our own that one cannot understand that power. And ... whatever doubts or vexations one has in Japan, it is only necessary to ask oneself: "Well, who are the best people to live with?"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In these great times which I knew when they were this small; which will become small again, provided they have time left for it ...... in these times in which things are happening that could not be imagined and in which what can no longer be imagined must happen, for if one could imagine it, it would not happen; in these serious times which have died laughing at the thought that they might become serious; which, surprised by their own tragedy, are reaching for diversion and, catching themselves redhanded, are groping for words ... in these times you should not expect any words of my own from me--none but these words which barely manage to prevent silence from being misinterpreted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Dark times" is what they call it in Norway when the sun remains below the horizon all day long: the temperature falls slowly but ...surely at such times.--A nice metaphor for all those thinkers for whom the sun of mankind's future has temporarily disappeared.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sum...s of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can't be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual--that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked--is surely at the core of our culture's fascination with pornography.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »