7 quotes
Any talented decadent can make unreality believable. To make reality convincing is another matter, a matter for only the greatest masters.
Classics Revisited (1968)
There have always been those who, though they see tragedy as the outcome of freedom, will nevertheless judge that tragedy is not too high a price to pay.
Classics Revisited (1968)
Men who live like Casanova are seldom interested in themselves; their egocentricity does not give them time for egotism.
Classics Revisited (1968)
Poetry has ceased to be a public art and has become, as Whitehead said of religion, "What man does with his aloneness."
Classics Revisited (1968)
Harvey, Galileo, Copernicus do not seem occult to us, but they did so to their contemporaries, hierophants of the mysteries of Natural Law, revealers of the secrets of a New Order of the Ages. After all, the movement eventually came to be called the Age of Enlightenment.
Classics Revisited (1968)
The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring — as Sappho says, "More real than real, more gold than gold."
Classics Revisited (1968)
The moral issues with which Marcus struggles would be, as he points out, unchanged whether the universe were mechanical and devoid of meaning or value or ruled by deity or Providence; whether the will were in fact free or determined; whether there were or were not a future life, or any even fugitive rewards and punishments at all.
Classics Revisited (1968)