Category Archives: Quotations

From Sontag’s Regarding The Pain of Others

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Malcolm Farley

To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a breathtaking provincialism.  It universalizes the viewing habits of a small, educated population living in the rich part of the world, where news has been converted into entertainment—that mature style of viewing … Continue reading →

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From Sontag’s Regarding The Pain of Others

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Malcolm Farley

Photographs that everyone recognizes are now a constituent part of what a society chooses to think about, or delcares that it has chosen to think about.   It calls these ideas “memories,” and that is, over the long run , … Continue reading →

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From Sontag’s Regarding The Pain of Others

Posted on July 16, 2010 by Malcolm Farley

But why is there not already, in the nation’s capital, which happens to be a city whose population  is overwhelmingly  Africa-American, a Museum of the History of Slavery?  Indeed, there is no Museum of the History of Slavery—the whole story, … Continue reading →

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Englishing de la Rochefoucauld (The Art of Conversation)

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Malcolm Farley

Maxim 139. One of the reasons why you find so few people who can carry on a rational and pleasing conversation is that there is hardly anyone who doesn’t think more about what he wants to say than about answering … Continue reading →

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Englishing de la Rochefoucauld (Laziness)

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Malcolm Farley

Maxim 54. Of all our passions, laziness is the most unacknowledged.  It is both the most eager and the most malignant motive of all, though its violence cannot be felt and the damage it causes is profoundly hidden.  If we … Continue reading →

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