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Among Venice's spells is one of peculiar potency: the power to awaken the philistine dozing in the skeptic's breast. People of this kind — dry, prose people of superior intelligence — object to feeling what they are supposed to feel, in the presence of marvels. They wish to feel something else. The extreme of this position is to feel nothing.

— Mary McCarthy Venice Observed (1956)

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Source: Ch. 1
Work: Venice Observed, 1956
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary McCarthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.