
“Intelligence is sexy par excellence.”
Original: (it) L'intelligenza è sexy per eccellenza.
Source: prevale.net
Footnote: Strictly speaking, "canonical" is not quite exact for the Greeks; and anachronistic even for the Jews...
Ch.VIII Further Observations on the Bible
The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962])
Context: Only two people in East Mediterranean antiquity developed [parallel tendecies towards] "canonical" Scripture: the Greeks and the Jews. The Greeks treated Homer as their Scripture par excellence, much as the Jews regarded the Bible.... Hebrew and pagan Greek scriptures were each considered the divinely inspired guide for life.
“Intelligence is sexy par excellence.”
Original: (it) L'intelligenza è sexy per eccellenza.
Source: prevale.net
“Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.”
The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. That a pitched coin should sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads every time, we wish to know how this result has been brought about. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.
“The charm par excellence belongs to the rebellious and determined woman.”
Original: Il fascino per eccellenza appartiene alla donna ribelle e determinata.
Source: prevale.net
Henri Poincaré, Critic of Crisis: Reflections on His Universe of Discourse (1954), Ch. 1. The Iconoclast
“The business virtue par excellence is honesty—without it markets can’t long survive.”
Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 27.
1964, p. 141; Chapter 1; Chapter 1: The Origin of Speech
Speech, 1930
André Breton or the Quest of the Beginning
Source: Alternating Current (1967)
Context: If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Variant: Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.
Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
“He strives after that which we translate 'virtue' but is in Greek aretê, 'excellence' …”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: "What moves the Greek warrior to deeds of heroism," Kitto comments, "is not a sense of duty as we understand it—duty towards others: it is rather duty towards himself. He strives after that which we translate 'virtue' but is in Greek aretê, 'excellence' … we shall have much to say about aretê. It runs through Greek life."
There, Phædrus thinks, is a definition of Quality that had existed a thousand years before the dialecticians ever thought to put it to word-traps. Anyone who cannot understand this meaning without logical definiens and definendum and differentia is either lying or so out of touch with the common lot of humanity as to be unworthy of receiving any reply whatsoever.