[after Anna hands Semyon a copy of Tatiana's diary] Semyon: I will need my spectacles and a clear head. Today I broke my rules and I drank vodka. Tomorrow I will translate it, and then I will bring what I've done to your home.
'Knowing' is one of those movies where you're going to get the spectacle, and you're going to have the entertainment in the grand science fiction tradition. But also, it will perhaps stimulate some discussion to help you sort out on your own where yo...
When the Romantic Novelists' Association was founded 35 years ago (in 1960) the image was of pink fluffy bimbos. Now, the view of life through rose-coloured spectacles has gone out of the window. A realistic background and certainly a more realistic ...
There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in ...
I walked inside Macy’s and faced the pathetic spectacle of a department store full of shoppers, none of whom were shopping for themselves. Without the instant gratification of a self-aimed purchase, everyone walked around in the tactical stupor of ...
The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to...
The Bedlam that greeted James Tilly Matthews, then, was not so much a baroque spectacle of depravity as an exhausted and run-down public institution, its building falling apart and its professional image tarnished.
The risk-bearing role of the rich cannot be performed so well by anyone else. The benefits of capitalism still depend on capitalists. The other groups on the pyramid of wealth should occasionally turn from the spectacles of consumption long enough to...
Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why t...
A history of civilization shares the presumptuousness of every philosophical enterprise: it offers the ridiculous spectacle of a fragment expounding the whole. Like philosophy, such a venture has no rational excuse, and is at best but a brave stupidi...
He did not blame them. Because in truth, that's what he did, what he was. Seduce and dominate. Charm and manipulate. A user of women. How they would scoff, Rothbury mused bitterly, if they knew that he was secretly in love with the silly little chit,...
Paris presents one incessant round of amusement & dissipation but very little, I believe - even for its inhabitants of that society - which interests the heart. Every day, you may see something new, magnificent & beautiful; every night, you may see a...
The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belie...
People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive...
Who was it who said something about the Indians being argumentative, good soul, let him come to Haridwar and meet this bunch. Good for him too, if he adapts with age; for if after fifty you don't live the aspirations of the young, go away. Who needs ...
When society involves the anarch in a conflict which in which he does not participate inwardly, it challenges him to launch an opposition. He will try to turn the lever with which society moves him. Society is then at his disposal, say, as a stage fo...
Leaders do not choose, rather they respond to God choosing them. Thus, the first responsive step of leadership is of utmost importance. It is an act of rebellion against the society of the spectacle - It is to relinquish a life of many options so tha...
When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. "Well?" said he. "Do you not fin...
It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support f...
I pointed, still unable to utter a word. Tim looked down at the spectacle behind the shed, his face swiftly draining of color. He gripped my arm with a clammy hand. And then he did something I'd been waiting half my life to see: he dropped into a dea...
Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use ...
