Qualities

Famous quotes containing the word qualities:

    I am writing to resist the view that Europe and civilization are going to Hell. If I am being “crucified for an idea”Mthat is, the coherent idea around which my muddles accumulated—it is probably the idea that European culture ought to survive, that the best qualities of it ought to survive along with whatever cultures, in whatever universality. Against the propaganda of terror and the propaganda of luxury, have you a nice simple answer?
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)

    If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will—the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.
    William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

    Whatever qualities [Tsar Nicholas I] may have shown in his own kingly profession, it must be admitted that in his dealings with the Russian Muse he was at the worst a vicious bully, at the best a clown.
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)