“Style a tablet at every noon time, Lady,
With bold images of a timid boy!”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“Forgetfulness is necessary to remembrance. Ideas are retained by renovation of that impression which time is always wearing away, and which new images are striving to obliterate. If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur, and every recurrence would reinstate them in their former place.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)