Famous quotes containing the words standard, modern and/or french:
“There is a certain standard of grace and beauty which consists in a certain relation between our nature, such as it is, weak or strong, and the thing which pleases us. Whatever is formed according to this standard pleases us, be it house, song, discourse, verse, prose, woman, birds, rivers, trees, room, dress, and so on. Whatever is not made according to this standard displeases those who have good taste.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“... for the modern soul, for which it is mere child’s play to bridge oceans and continents, there is nothing so impossible as to find the contact with the souls dwelling just around the corner.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisan intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)