Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information--hence, something inesse...ntial. This is the hallmark of bad translations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words a...ppear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why--but the editorialists forget it--terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, n...o, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Far less brilliant, original, and versatile than the Greeks, the Romans were content to borrow most of their culture from them. Th...ey gave it their own practical bent, however, translating it into terms more suitable for universal use. They were able to transmit it to the barbaric West and thereby to lay the foundations of modern Europe. Then they systematized education, bequeathing the seven liberal arts to the Middle Ages. They adapted Greek philosophy to daily needs, applying it to government and recasting it into a philosophy of life available to men without high gifts. They developed the type of cultivated gentleman--the type of Cicero, Horace, and Pliny the Younger, who were less spontaneous and exciting than the Greeks but more moderate, urbane and sensible.... The practical sense of the Romans also led to some original contributions, notably their monumental architecture. While the Greeks stuck to their simple post and lintel, the Romans exploited the possibilities of the arch, the dome, and the vault to erect baths, palaces, amphitheaters, and government buildings.... Their architecture was more humanistic than the Greek in that it contributed much more to civic life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredi...bly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sunflecks form patterns representing in some awful way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does ...not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers--such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This American government,--what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity..., but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we all must allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished. For government is an expedient by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most left alone by it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »