Adversity and loss make a man wise.
Man is the measure of all things.
People who foster dependence on illicit drugs such as heroin are regarded among the most unscrupulous pariahs of modern civilisation. In contrast, pushers of licit drugs tend to be viewed as altruistically motivated purveyors of social good.
In the Modern Age, there are still those who refuse to contradict a single word of the Bible, even though the Bible contradicts itself.
We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.
Modernity gone wrong has isolated humanity and made human reason autonomous of (and dismissive toward) revelation.
The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.
The modern spirit is a hesitant one. Spontaneity has given way to cautious legalisms, and the age of heroes has been superseded by a cult of specialization. We have no more giants; only obedient ants.
Landscaping is the great cardinal sin of modern architecture. It's not your garden, it's not a park - it's a formless patch of grass, shrubbery and the occasional tree that exists purely to stop the original developer's plans from looking like a howl...
Valentine!" "You mean father. I despise this modern habit of calling one's parents by their names." "What I want to call you is a hell of a lot more unprintable than your name." - Clary Fray and Valentine Morgenstern (City of Ashes)
Our modern world, though infinitely more complex than that of ancient Greece, is also far more superficial. Where the Greeks offered simple psychological training, we live in an age of style and spin in which perceptions of good and evil slither and ...
We have started something called the Corporate Services Corps. Now, it was modeled after the Peace Corps from long ago, the 1960s. And the idea was in this modern day and age, how do you get IBM'ers around the world to be global citizens? You know, g...
There's barely a strand of the modern media that the Kardashian-Wests haven't been able to master, and for good reason: Kanye is an amazing performer and cultural provocateur, while Kim, through her strength of character, has created a place for hers...
In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a re...
I felt most beautiful on the red carpet in Givenchy's sheer lace dress at a dinner hosted by Givenchy in honor of Marina Abramovich at the closing of her Museum of Modern Art retrospective, 'The Artist is Present', in 2010. It was the first time I ha...
After loss of Identity, the most potent modern terror, is loss of sexuality, or, as Descartes didn’t say, "I fuck therefore I am".
That's why moderns have to have hobbies. They can't find satisfaction in their money-earning work, so many seek creative satisfaction in model planes and trains.
Tess realized one of the great modern dating sadnesses: everyone is so used to the comforting glow of the computer screen that no one can go so far as to say "good morning" in public without being liquored up.
Wise random strangers at bars are modern-day Oracles of Delphi, except drunk and sometimes leaving abruptly when it's their turn for karaoke.
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.
Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have...
