“The struggle to make an absolute statement in an individually conceived vocabulary accounts for the profound tensions inherent in the best modern work.”
Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 316, "Metaphysical Feelings in Modern Art"
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Harold Rosenberg 29
American writer and art critic 1906–1978Related quotes

"The Contagion of Ideas", p. 44. A speech delivered to a group of teachers (Summer 1952); not previously published
On the Contrary: Articles of Belief 1946–1961 (1961)

Anatha Murthy, in his book review, describes Masti, the Sahitya Akademi Awardee as here [Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Masti, http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Masti.html?id=e6VqgWouUmUC&redir_esc=y, 2004, Katha, 978-81-87649-50-2, Review]
About Masti

Chpt.2, p. 21
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: But Strabo rejects this theory as insufficient to account for all the phenomena, and he proposes one of his own, the profoundness of which modern geologists are only beginning to appreciate. 'It is not,' he says, 'because the lands covered by seas were originally at different altitudes, that the waters have risen, or subsided, or receded from some parts and inundated others. But the reason is, that the same land is sometimes raised up and sometimes depressed, and the sea also is simultaneously raised and depressed, so that it either overflows or returns into its own place again. We must therefore ascribe the cause to the ground, either to that ground which is under the sea, or to that which becomes flooded by it, but rather to that which lies beneath the sea, for this is more moveable, and, on account of its humidity, can be altered with great celerity. It is proper,' he observes in continuation, 'to derive our explanations from things which are obvious, and in some measure of daily occurrence, such as deluges, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and sudden swellings of the land beneath the sea;' for the last raise up the sea also, and when the same lands subside again, they occasion the sea to be let down. And it is not merely the small, but the large islands also, and not merely the islands, but the continents, which can be lifted up together with the sea; and both large and small tracts may subside, for habitations and cities, like Bure, Bizona, and many others, have been engulfed by earthquakes.

“The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension”
Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI
Context: The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

At the Booksmith http://litseen.com/?p=7466, reading from Distrust That Particular Flavor. (19 January 2012).