We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find our...selves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a ...civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The following general definition of an animal: a system of different organic molecules that have combined with one another, under ...the impulsion of a sensation similar to an obtuse and muffled sense of touch given to them by the creator of matter as a whole, until each one of them has found the most suitable position for its shape and comfort.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion ...of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The moral equalizes all; enriches, empowers all. It is the coin which buys all, and which all find in their pocket. Under the whip... of the driver, the slave shall feel his equality with saints and heroes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Then did they strive with emulation who should repeat most wise maxims importing the necessity of suspicion in the choice of our f...riends--such as "mistrust is the mother of security," with many more to the same effect.... But notwithstanding the esteem which they professed for suspicion, yet did they think proper to veil it under the name of caution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Celestial roundsmen under the aegis of the 'New England Watch and Ward Society' inaugurated a virulent campaign against 'lewd and ...indecent' books and plays. What is salacity? It was like the time-honored stickler: How old is Ann? Other cities indulged in loud guffaws over the antics of the Boston censors as the latter grew hotter and hotter and more and more bothered over the perplexing problem. 'Banned in Boston' came to be the novelist's and dramatist's dream of successful publicity--'a natural' in advertising.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Van Gogh was right in saying that the method he had chosen could be compared to that of caricature. Caricature had always been "ex...pressionist," for the caricaturist plays with the likeness of his victim, and distorts it to express just what he feels about his fellow man. As long as these distortions of nature sailed under the flag of humour nobody seemed to find them difficult to understand. Humourous art was a field in which everything was permitted, because people did not approach it with the prejudices they reserved for Art with a capital A. But the idea of a serious caricature, of an art which deliberately changed the appearance of things not to express a sense of superiority, but maybe love, or admiration, or fear, proved indeed a stumbling block as Van Gogh had predicted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a great mistake to suppose that clever, imaginative children ... should content themselves with the empty nonsense which is ...so often set before them under the name of Children's Tales. They want something much better; and it is surprising how much they see and appreciate which escapes a good, honest, well- informed papa.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »