Famous quotes containing the words activating and/or factor:
“it is best then that the buried word remain buried for we were intended to appreciate only its fruits and not the secret principle activating them to know this would be to know too much. Meanwhile it is possible to know just enough, and this is all we were supposed to know, toward which we have been straining all our lives.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded.... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)