“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

— John Keats

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

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John Keats 211

English Romantic poet 1795–1821

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“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us — and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (February 3, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“Within itself the soul sees all things more truly than as they exist in different things outside itself. And the more it goes out unto other things in order to know them, the more it enters into itself in order to know itself.”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

Nicholas of Cusa and Jasper Hopkins (Translator). On Equality. 1459.

“[T]he recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius. And the spectacle of nothingness is itself a thing in these works, and seems to enlarge the reader’s soul, to raise it up and to make it take satisfaction in itself and its despair.”

Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone

260, 5th October 1820. Translation by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino et al. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 9780141194400], p. 177
Zibaldone (1898)

“Let words proceed as they please, provided only your soul keeps its own sure order, provided your soul is great and holds unruffled to its ideals, pleased with itself on account of the very things which displease others, a soul that makes life the test of its progress, and believes that its knowledge is in exact proportion to its freedom from desire and its freedom from fear.”

Seneca the Younger book Epistulae morales ad Lucilium

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CXV: On the Superficial Blessings

“Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

When asked what amazes him about people, in an interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpcvJiZUbzI
Context: Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart — incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.

“Mathematics is one of the essential emanations of the human spirit, a thing to be valued in and for itself, like art or poetry.”

Oswald Veblen (1880–1960) American mathematician

Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 30 (1924), p. 289.

“Hegel … destroyed the illusion of the subject’s being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity. … However, … we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with the greatest efforts, with infinite pains?”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society

Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 16

“Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart — incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

When asked what amazes him about people, in an interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpcvJiZUbzI

“The truth is that the public has done one of those startling and amazing things that they do about once in a hundred years. They’ve seized an idea.”
“What is it?”
“That however the brains and abilities of men may differ, their stomachs are essentially the same.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

“What Kant regarded as a unique (Copernican) turn to transcendental reflection becomes in Hegel a general mechanism for turning consciousness back upon itself. This mechanism has been switched on and off time and time again in the development of spirit. As the subject becomes conscious of itself, it destroys one form of consciousness after another. This process epitomizes the subjective experience that what initially appears to the subject as a being in itself can become content only in the forms imparted to it by the subject. The transcendental philosopher’s experience is thus, according to Hegel, reenacted naively whenever an in-itself becomes a for-the-subject. What Hegel calls “Dialectical” is the reconstruction of this recurrent experience and of its assimilation by the subject, which gives rise to ever more complex structures. … Hegel, it should be noted, exposes himself to a criticism. … Reconstructing successive forms of consciousness is one thing. Proving the necessity of their succession is quite another.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 5

“Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.”

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