No two persons ever read the same book.
Edmund WilsonRead
I find more and more that I am a man of the 1920s. I still expect something exciting. Drinks, animated conversation, gaiety: the uninhibited exchange of ideas.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a longing for the vibrant social atmosphere and intellectual excitement of the 1920s.
In this quote, Edmund Wilson expresses nostalgia for the lively and dynamic essence of the 1920s, emphasizing the importance of engaging conversations and the free flow of ideas. This longing highlights a desire for a more vibrant, stimulating, and joyous social experience, reflecting his belief in the value of connection and creativity in human interactions.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of creativity in modern life.
It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.
Where once the student was taught that the unexamined life was not worth living, he is now taught that the profitably lived life is not worth examining.
Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.
It's not crime that makes us more punitive in the United States. It's the way we respond to crime and how we view those people who have been labeled criminals.
We have sought for firm ground and found none. _x000D_ The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance.
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