Background Knowledge

Famous quotes containing the words background and/or knowledge:

    Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.
    —G.C. (Georg Christoph)