Transparent Overlays

Famous quotes containing the words transparent and/or overlays:

    not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
    not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
    but that as if transparent all disclosed
    an otherness that was blessèd, that was bliss.
    I saw Paradise in the dust of the street.
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)

    Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.
    Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)