#lt

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs. ↗

— Thomas Wolfe

#arts #beliefs #culture #elevated #set

When you're young, you don't think very far ahead. You just think in terms of the next day, the next week, the next competition. You don't think about injuries that could threaten your long-term health. ↗

— Katarina Witt

#ahead #competition #could #day #far

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#difficult #nothing #oneself

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed "Wisdom." And then I know exactly what is going to follow: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#chapter #come #culture #every #exactly

Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony. ↗

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

#augustine #being #celebrated #ceremony #church

A typical 'Larry King Live' is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he's strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject. ↗

— James Wolcott

#chair #defies #his #king #larry

I understand that one of the purposes of bipartisanship is to cram something difficult and necessary down the American people's gullets for which neither party has the fortitude to assume full responsibility. It's a way of turning a possible gangplank into a teeter-totter. ↗

— James Wolcott

#assume #bipartisanship #cram #difficult #down

Like 'Twin Peaks,' '24,' 'Mad Men,' and 'The Sopranos' before it, 'Downton Abbey' enriches the iconography and collective lore of pop culture. It replenishes the stream. ↗

— James Wolcott

#before #collective #culture #enriches #iconography

Pop music has been all but relegated to the remainder bin at MTV and VH1, where high-maintenance concoctions such as Paris Hilton, Flavor Flav, and Hulk Hogan's biohazard clan of bleached specimens provide endless hours of death-hastening diversion. ↗

— James Wolcott

#bin #bleached #clan #diversion #endless

Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night. ↗

— James Wolcott

#culture #dawns #longer #new #night