“What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?”
Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
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Ralph Waldo Emerson727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret. We hope for the future, and then we turn to the past, and then we begin slowly and desperately to hope for the past! The two most violent and abiding feelings, hope and regret, both lean upon nothing. To ask, to ask, to have not! Humanity is exactly the same thing as poverty. Happiness has not the time to live; we have not really the time to profit by what we are. Happiness, that thing which never is — and which yet, for one day, is no longer!
Qasem Soleimani (1957–2020) Iranian senior military officer
In a 2009 interview <br class="br">Quoted in "Soleimani, a General Who Became Iran Icon by Targeting US" https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/ap-ml-iran-qassem-soleimani.html. The Associated Press
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
John Rivers in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)
Context: You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.
Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer
letter of April 1915; in: Briefe im Kriege, pp. 33 (March 28, 1915), 64 (May 21, 1915); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 110
1900s - 1920s
“A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying.”
F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) British literary critic
Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry (1936; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964)
Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle
Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter II, "Rio de Janeiro", 18 April 1832, page 29 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=image&itemID=F11&pageseq=48
Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian
Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 88
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Source: 1920s, Science and the Modern World (1925), Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction"