I think much German painting has been underrated -- and much French painting overrated. One of the best mid-19th-century was the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter (his Novellen are exquisite). Here is his Moonrise.

When Stevens uses words like “things,” “ideas,” or “sense,” you feel that he must use those words in precisely the way he uses them; that is, he is not relying on what you already know about those words—he is making you think hard about what those words might mean in particular contexts. In this way, he is making huge areas of apparently unpoetic language available to poetry, and only a few poets have done this because only a few poets employ generalized diction with such unerring precision.
The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.- Jacques Barzun, born on this date in 1907
For the last month or so, I'd been spending my days crafting lush and richly imagined bits of narrative—long, lovely descriptions of characters and scenery, page after page of elegant prose in which nothing whatsoever was going on. No wonder I was bored.
Bloom’s most famous critical idea is his literary adaptation of Freud’s Oedipus complex: according to Bloom, every writer seeks to liberate himself from a powerful literary influence by the “revisionary act” of “emptying” and “undoing” the great precursor, then taking his place.
Newman makes a crucial distinction between "notional assent" and "real assent." To determine a belief using your philosophical head alone is to give notional assent. But when it comes to religious questions, that's an inadequate way to proceed because it engages only the rational part. Real assent requires more, Newman argues. It's a convergence of the full assortment of evidences and experiences we have – rational, emotional, observational, cultural. Each, in themselves, may not be wholly compelling. But added together, they support a belief that powerfully rings true. Newman likens it to a cable: a single strand is easily broken. But wound together, strands form a cable that is strong. So, real assent implies that God is not a hypothesis.Mark calls himself an agnostic, but his agnosticism -- which seems to me more the practice of apophasis -- is but one strand in his "cable of belief." What would he call himself in terms of the entire cable and not just that one strand, I wonder?
Another impediment to innovation today is funding. Dr. Watson thinks money is being spread around too much and not enough is going to the best brains. "Great wealth could make an enormous difference over the next decade if they sensibly support the scientific elite. Just the elite. Because the elite makes most of the progress," he says. "You should worry about people who produce really novel inventions, not pedantic hacks."
Paradoxes are apparently good arguments that lead to conclusions that are beyond belief (Greek: “para” = beyond, “doxa” = belief).It is probably just a quibble, but the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology has it as "contrary to received opinion." Doxa, which means "opinion," in fact derives from dokein, which means "to seem, appear, think." The word dogma also derives from doxa. A dogma is a settled opinion. Interesting implications at work here, I would guess.
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.- C.S. Lewis, born on this date in 1898
The gilt is beautiful and eye-catching, but also serves a practical purpose - applied in conjunction with glue, it helps to protect the page edges from browning, moisture and dust. They should be treated with care, however, as they are susceptible to physical damage and easy to scratch.
To him that waits all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in the darkness, what he has seen in the light.- Coventry Patmore, who died on this date in 1896
Only those within whose own consciousness the sun rises and sets, the leaves burgeon and wither, can be said to be aware of what living is.- Joseph Wood Krutch, born on this date in 1893
... as [William James] wittily noted: ‘Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see “the liver” determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul.’ Only atheists don’t usually consider dismissing their own convictions on evolutionary grounds. Funny that.
Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?- Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont), who died on this date in 1874
When Heraclitus said that everything passes steadily along, he was not inciting us to make the best of the moment, an idea unseemly to his placid mind, but to pay attention to the pace of things. Each has its own rhythm: the nap of a dog, the procession of the equinoxes, the dances of Lydia, the majestically slow beat of the drums at Dodona, the swift runners at Olympia.- Guy Davenport, born on this date in 1927
"... though perhaps a minor one, she must nonetheless be acclaimed as an enduring master."
... there is, for James, such a thing as genuine mystical experience, providing a pointer to a reality that is more likely true not false. The monism and optimism that is their product have such a demonstrably positive impact upon those who have them. And, James concludes, "that which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself".
James's logic is faulty on this point. Robert Segal, of Lancaster University, has called it the "functional fallacy": delusions can lead an individual to act in positive ways, too.
Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.- André Gide, born on this date in 1869
“That single chapter in a much longer book is one of the great works of modern literature. You would find a lot in it to think about. I’m sure your Russian faculty would love to talk with you about it – if only you had a Russian department, which now, of course, you don’t."
Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood.- Beryl Bainbridge, born on this date in 1934
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"Sounds a bit like the parable of the cockle and the wheat.
Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.- Josiah Royce, born on this date in 1855
We do not know what God is. God himself doesn't know what He is because He is not anything. Literally God is not, because He transcends being.- John Scotus Eriugena
The marriage of reason and nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies and the dreams that money can buy.- J. G. Ballard, born on this date in 1930
If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.- Shelby Foote, born on this dare in 1916
For my money, no one is funnier than Laurel and Hardy, especially when they dance.For my money, too. Here they dance, and Ollie sings:
"The things you prefer — tastes that you like to think of as personal, unique, justified only by sensibility — correspond tightly to defining measures of social class: your profession, your highest degree and your father’s profession."
The famous saying 'God is love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God.
- Charles Williams
Peace is more than dreaming and singing songs. Sometimes it requires courage. In fact, it doesn’t mean much unless it does. Otherwise, it’s just the easy pacifism of the non-combatant.
Poetry evokes out of words the resonance of the primordial world.- Gerhart Hauptmann, born on this date in 1862
... he fled in a two-seater plane...
What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease.- Jean Paul, who died on this date in 1825
Mr. Blom focuses on the rival salons of Paris and the often fraught personal relations of his subjects. The salons were organized by aristocratic men and women, affording the philosophes opportunities to try out their literary wares and show off their quick-wittedness. Some of these convivial occasions involved gargantuan quantities of food and wine, if Mr. Blom's sample menu offering 30 dishes is any guide. No wonder so many philosophes seem to have ended up gouty and spherical, despite the moral austerities they often enjoined on others.
Writing is the only trade I know of in which sniveling confessions of extreme incompetence are taken as credentials probative of powers to astound the multitude.- George V. Higgins, born on this date in 1939