To put this as crisply as I can, the study of the classics is the study of what happens in the gap between antiquity and ourselves.
—Mary Beard, Do the Classics Have a Future?
Boo’ful,” she said, “life could be so diff’rent—”
“But it never is,” I said.
—Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Longing not so much to change things as to overturn them.
—Cicero (via nathanielstuart)
We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and to the cold machine. A new form of writing will be necessary. I have thought of that and I can feel what is coming. But I rather like it. This swift change of scene, this blending of emotion and experience … in life, too, changes and transitions flash before our eyes, and emotions of the soul are like a hurricane. The cinema has divined the mystery of motion. And that is greatness.
—Leo Tolstoy, from a letter to a friend on the advent of cinema (via confusionis)
