"What really dissatisfies in American civilisation is the want of the interesting, a want due chiefly to the want of those two great elements of the interesting, which are elevation and beauty."

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“If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.”

“The governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness; that of Hebraism, strictness of conscience.”

“Eutrapelia. "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.”

“Style…is a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certain condition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say, in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it.”

“The W.T. Stead Resource Site”

“Thou hast no right to bliss.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Time was a flickering gray fire constantly consuming all things, so that what appeared to be motion was actually the oxidation and reduction of possibilities, the collapse of potential matter from gra…"

— Michael Swanwick

Literature1950

#beauty

"Personally, for this reason, I feel great professional satisfaction and I think we can all be satisfied. Our generation certainly needs to be satisfied. If the next generation are young, this youth is…"

— Dušan Šestić

Music1946

#philosophy

"What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordinatio…"

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Literature1941–2022

#war

"The measures of Power, and by consequence of Obedience, must be taken from the express Laws of any State or Body of Men, from the Oaths that they swear, or from immemorial Prescription, and a long Pos…"

— Gilbert Burnet

Religion1643–1715

#justice