Spanish Essayist, Philosopher Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.
Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will. The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travelers, caf s full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors full of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail.