Culture is knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world; in other words, culture means reading, not idle and casual reading, but reading that is controlled and directed by a definite purpose. Reading, so understood, is difficult, and contrary to an almost universal belief, those who can do it are very few. I have already remarked the fact that there is no more groundless assumption than that literacy carries with it the ability to read. At the age of seventy-nine Goethe said that those who make this assumption "do not know what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been working at it for eighteen years, and I can't say yet that I am completely successful."
Albert Jay NockRelated topics
ability age almost assumption best casual control definite few idle knowing learn literacy purpose read reading thought trouble universal working yet means words years Goethe costsRelated quotes
When I was.... in the surroundings of pictures and things of art... I then had a violent passion for them... And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures. Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there... But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture.... my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects?
Vincent van Gogh
Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces.... So now this bloodthirsty guttersnipe must launch his mechanized armies upon new fields of slaughter, pillage and devastation.
Winston Churchill
It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the beginning. ... It is very hard to realise that this is all just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realise that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.
Steven Weinberg
Steal music from napster while you have the chance. find free porn on the internet. sneak across the border into mexico just for the irony. how come every one on the internet is "hot"? tell your parents the truth. start your own army. adopt a dog. tell your children the truth. stop complaining and go out and do something about it. jump out of a fucking plane. stop reading this crap right now. don't listen to me. i don't have any answers and i stole the questions from someone else. read a good book. dont beat yourself up. question authority but don't forget to do what your told. turn off your computer right now and go outside and let people into your life.
Jared Leto
God has permitted and does permit us to be shaken by adversity. Difficult times lie ahead. We will be greatly tested. We have to take this warning seriously and live spiritually... Many saints would have loved to have lived in our times and have had our chance to struggle for Christ... Our struggle matters because it is not a struggle against an Ali Pasha, or a Hitler and a Mussolini, but a struggle against the devil himself. For this reason, our wages will be heavenly... The saints will become more holy and the vile will become more vile. Yet I feel great consolation inside. This is only a storm; like past storms, it will pass. May the Good God take evil and turn it into good. Amen.
Paisios of Mount Athos