F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for the... eighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to gove...rn this nation. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war," except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are no lower or higher or median moralities. There is only one morality, and it is precisely the one that was given to us du...ring the time of Jesus Christ and that stops me, you and Barantsevich from stealing, offending others, lying etc.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
His youth was distinguished by all the tumult and storm of pleasures, in which he licentiously triumphed, disdaining all decorum. ...His fine imagination was often heated and exhausted with his body in celebrating and deifying the prostitute of the night, and his convivial joys were pushed to all the extravagancy of frantic bacchanals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While abroad, he met with a very salacious English woman, whose liberality retrieved his fortune, with several circumstances more ...to the honor of his vigor than his morals.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;... at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »