#1,587

Civilization is what is born when the soul does not surrender to its congenital vulgarity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 264

#1,586

The abuse of the printing press is due to the scientific method and the expressionist aesthetic.
To the former because it allows any mediocre person to write a correct and useless monograph, and to the latter because it legitimizes the effusions of any fool.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 264

#1,585

The modern mentality does not conceive that order can be imposed without resorting to police regulations.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,584

The absence of God does not clear the way for the tragic but for the sordid.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,583

Prayer is the only act in whose effectiveness I trust.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,582

The desire to be informed is the dissolvent of culture.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,581

The fight against evil today is a rearguard action.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,580

Goya is the seer of demons, Picasso their accomplice.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,579

The universalism of the plastic medieval languages took shape as regional variations, whereas the local varieties of the current cosmopolitan art are mere solecisms of pronunciation.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,578

When originality is rare, innovation abounds.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 263

#1,577

God is that inscrutable feeling of protection at our back.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,576

Humanity fell into modern history like an animal into a trap.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,575

The reactionary does not argue against the world in the hope of defeating it, but so that the rights of the soul do not prescribe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,574

History inexorably punishes stupidity, but it does not necessarily reward intelligence.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,573

Among ideas only the stupid ones are immortal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,572

If they had fewer saviors, societies would need fewer [saviors] to save them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,571

How many things would seem less irritating if we were less envious!

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,570

There is an illiteracy of the soul which no diploma cures.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 262

#1,569

History is a series of nights and days.
Of short days and long nights.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,568

The supreme folly lies in doing even the most trivial things “on principle.”

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,567

We end up treating each other as fungible goods when we cease believing in the soul.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,566

Nothing is more difficult than to doubt our victims’ guilt.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,565

Problems do not get solved; they merely go out of fashion.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,564

The press does not intend to inform the reader but rather to persuade the reader that it informs him.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,563

Individuals, in modern society, are each day more similar to one another and each day more estranged from one another.
Identical monads clashing with each other with ferocious individualism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 261

#1,562

Just as evil was the first betrayal, betrayal is the only sin.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,561

Not everything betrays us, but there is nothing that cannot betray us.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,560

He who believes he is pardoning a vile sentiment by saying it is sincere is merely making it worse.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,559

To have common sense is to have a presentiment in each concrete case of the pertinent limitations of the intellect.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,558

The great man’s errors are so painful for us because they give a fool the chance to correct them.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,557

Instead of “industrial society,” it is in fashion to say “consumer society” in order to avoid the problem by pretending to confront it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,556

In the last century they could fear that modern ideas would be right.
Today we see that they were only going to win.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 260

#1,555

The press always chooses what to praise with impeccably bad taste.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,554

Man’s only precious goods are the moldy memories of his imagination.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,553

The mastery which man has gained over nature only helps him to debase it without fear.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,552

Man does not admire anything sincerely except what is undeserved.
Talent, lineage, beauty.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,551

Making us feel intelligent is how nature notifies us that we are saying something stupid.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,550

The plethora of objects in the midst of which we live has made us insensible to the quality, to the texture, to the individuality, of the object.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,549

We try to excuse the defects we have by supposing they are the reverse of qualities we falsely attribute to ourselves.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 259

#1,548

Rather than humanizing technology, modern man prefers to technify man.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,547

While the democratic voter disposes of another man’s fate, his has already been disposed of by a bureaucrat.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,546

History is irreversible.
But it is not unrepeatable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,545

Man needs less to solve his problems than to believe that they have been solved.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,544

True eloquence causes the audience to tremble but does not convince it.
Without the promise of spoils no oratory is effective.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,543

Intellectual vulgarity attracts voters like flies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,542

Power does not necessarily corrupt anyone except the revolutionary who assumes it.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,541

Cordiality tends to be less an effusion of goodness than of bad manners.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 258

#1,540

The distance between interlocutors of different generations is proportional to the stupidity of each interlocutor.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 257

#1,539

Vulgarity is not a product of the people but a subproduct of bourgeois prosperity.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 257

#1,538

An excess of etiquette paralyzes; a lack of etiquette animalizes.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 257