I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
God wasgood onthephysical and emotional sides and a great one for hate. He generously spilled his own hate into his dearest creation.
Il de couvraitle monde des e motions qu'on nomme, a' la le ge' re, physiques. He was discoveringthe world of the emotions that are so lightly called physical.
A poet is a person who thinks there is something special about a poet and about his loving one unattainable woman.You'll usually find he takes the physical out on whores. I am defining a romantic poetand there is no other kind. An unromantic poet is a self-contradiction.
What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenitya soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
Science has, as its whole purpose, the rendering of the physical world understandable and beautiful. Without this you have only tables and statistics.
Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
With each generation the entire race passes through the body of its womanhood as through a mould, reappearing withtheindeliblemarks ofthat mould upon it, that as the os cervix of woman, through which the head of the human infant passes at birth, forms a ring, determining for ever the size at birth of the human headso exactly the intellectual capacity, the physical vigour, the emotional depth of woman, forms also an untranscendable circle, circumscribing with each successive generation the limits of expansion of the human race. 720
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups Literary intellectuals at one poleat the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
The preservation of health is a duty.Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.
Technology, while adding daily to our physical ease, throws dailyanother loop of fine wire around our souls. It contributes hugely to our mobility, which we must not confuse with freedom. The extensions of our senses, which we find so fascinating, are not adding to the discrimination of our minds, since we need increasingly to take the reading of a needle on a dial to discover whether we think something isgood or bad, or right or wrong.
I suffer the anthropological malady diagnosed by Le vi- Strauss inTristes tropiques: I find it much more difficult to suspend value judgments about the society in which I normally reside than I do abroad. It takes physical and cultural distance to gain moral detachment and political noncommitment. Relativism implies a solid measure of indifference.
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
For sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough; and as very worthy representatives of our national capacity for individual enterprise, which it is hoped even themodern craze for regulating everydetail of our lives will never stifle.
Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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