How that thing worksHow that thing works
“Love endures only when the lovers love many things together, and not merely each other.” — Lippmann, A Preface to Morals
Category: Lit & Crit
The necessary and the sufficientThe necessary and the sufficient
“Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (from Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century)
AttributionAttribution
It should be noted here and now (if not earlier) that the Lippmann quotes being posted to this site are sourced from Ronald Steel’s Walter Lippmann and the American Century, published in 1980 by the Atlantic Monthly Press.
You know, those were different timesYou know, those were different times
“The decade 1840–1850, preceding the rush to the gold-diggings, was an important period in the history of Australian poetry. The development of New South Wales brought about an increase in the number of newspapers, and the newspapers gave opportunities for the publication of verse.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. XII
Seer suckersSeer suckers
“Farmers without land, workers without jobs, ordinary men and women without hope, all were fodder for visionaries promising the earth.” – MacMillan, Paris 1919
What it isWhat it is
“Total freedom is both the dream of every artist and a promise of catastrophe.” — Anthony Lane, “Wives’ Tales”
Putting things in perspectivePutting things in perspective
“Play is never taken seriously by the players–that’s one of its hallmarks. If it does become serious, it ceases to be play.” — Dodman, The Cat Who Cried for Help
Settling accountsSettling accounts
“You cannot make up for the evil things you do–they’re there forever. You can only add better things to your list of deeds in hopes of creating some kind of cosmic balance.” — Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Hidden Life of Deer
In case you were wonderingIn case you were wondering
“The forces called electricity and chemical affinity are one and the same.” — Michael Faraday, quoted in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
Tell them I said helloTell them I said hello
“Men of genius work from the centre outwards.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
It was a beautiful dreamIt was a beautiful dream
“At this time, interest in natural philosophy was widely disseminated, and, in science, as in politics and literature, new ideas were readily welcomed.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VIII
Stiff upper lips and all thatStiff upper lips and all that
“Though prudence, intrepidity and perseverance united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. VII
We call them our elected representativesWe call them our elected representatives
“Sir Thomas Gresham, writing on the coinage, lays it down as a principle that, if you have in a country good coins and deteriorated coins of the same metal current side by side, the bad will drive out the good, and Gresham’s law may often be applied to literature, to art and, especially, to journalism. The largest circulations have often been attained by newspapers not exhibiting the highest characteristics; indeed, newspapers have been known suddenly to reach enormous sales by publishing articles describing the careers of notorious criminals.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. IV
Short and sweetShort and sweet
“Among English-speaking people, it is difficult to make a great reputation out of short stories.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XIV, Ch. III
Welcome to the new world orderWelcome to the new world order
“While life without industry is guilt, industry without art is brutality.” — from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, regarding the work of Ruskin
But we all do, if we live long enoughBut we all do, if we live long enough
“God forbid you should have to live with the consequences of decisions, permanent, eternal, that will chase you in your head, turning from this side to that, tossing between wrong and right.” — Nathan Englander, “Free Fruit for Young Widows”
A soldier’s recommendationA soldier’s recommendation
“Publish and be damned.” — Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, 1824
There’s building and there’s growingThere’s building and there’s growing
“Whereas aestheticians from Aristotle on have insisted that figurative language should redouble and underline the thrust of the anecdote, it turns out that exactly the opposite is what often appeals to us in great works of art, a strange and even mystical discrepancy between the natural drift of the story and the contradictory impulses of the metaphors and similes and descriptions.” — Edmund White, “The Strange Charms of John Cheever”
Self-reflective opacitySelf-reflective opacity
“Insofar as we can treat a text as not referring to what is outside or beyond it, we more easily understand that it has internal relationships independent of the coding procedures by which we may find it transparent upon a known world.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Regarding Words of Manipulative DissimulationRegarding Words of Manipulative Dissimulation
“We should never underestimate our predisposition to believe whatever is presented under the guise of an authoritative report and is also consistent with the mythological structure of a society from which we derive comfort, and which it may be uncomfortable to dispute.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Just the facts, ma’amJust the facts, ma’am
“If so many causes act in concert to ensure that texts are from the beginning and sometimes indeterminately studded with interpretations; and if these texts in their very nature demand further interpretation and yet resist it, what should we expect when the document in question denies its own opacity by claiming to be a transparent account of the recognizable world? In practice we may feel that we have no particular difficulty in distinguishing between narratives which claim to be reliable records of fact, and narratives which simply go through the motions of being such a record. But when we think about it, as on occasion we may compel ourselves to do, the distinction may grow troublesome.” — Kermode, “What Precisely Are the Facts?”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Saying it rightSaying it right
“It don’t sound right if it ain’t said right.” — Bill Withers, Still Bill
What it takesWhat it takes
“It takes very little to make a character: a few indications of idiosyncracy, of deviation from type, are enough, for our practiced eyes will make up the larger patterns of which such indications can be read as parts.” — Kermode, “Necessities of Upspringing”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Historical appearancesHistorical appearances
“Sometimes it appears that the history of interpretation may be thought of as a history of exclusions, which enable us to seize upon [one] issue rather than on some other as central, and choose from the remaining mass only what seems most compliant.” — Kermode, “Carnal and Spiritual Senses”, The Genesis of Secrecy
Removing the solidsRemoving the solids
“We are always having to explain not the story, but why it counts.” — Kermode, “Instances of Interpretation”, The Art of Telling
Forward, into the pastForward, into the past
“The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” — Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
What’s that smell?What’s that smell?
“If we have only to say, ‘humanity stinks in our nostrils’ then silence is better, because we have heard that news.” — Saul Bellow, in a 1959 letter
Traversing the desert without a compassTraversing the desert without a compass
“Every work of art, even though it is produced by following an explicit or implicit poetic of necessity, is effectively open to a virtually unlimited range of possible readings, each of which causes the work to acquire new vitality in terms of one particular taste, or perspective, or personal performance.” — Umberto Eco, “The Poetics of the Open Work”
CocooningCocooning
“We do well to be thickly wadded with stupidity against an intolerable chaos.” — Frank Kermode, “Recognition and Deception”, The Art of Telling
Subliminality, TransliminalitySubliminality, Transliminality
“Greek tragedy was rooted in the empirical observation that there is no relationship between justice and suffering. Tragedy confronts us with our frailties and limits and the disastrous consequences of trying to exceed them. It advances a counter-intuitive thesis: that efforts to limit suffering through the accumulation of knowledge or power might invite more suffering.” — Richard Ned Lebow, The Tragic Vision of Politics