Word: inhabitation
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...keen observations, whether of animal or plant, carry mystical overtones. He would insist with Thoreau that "this curious world which we inhabit ... is more to be admired and enjoyed than it is to be used." Indeed, he takes up the cudgels against man's shortsighted ambition to "control nature." That whole concept, he asserts, is false. Modern man needs greater understanding of "the inclusive community of rocks and soils, plants and animals, of which we are a part." The idea of a world for man's use only is unrealizable. Long ago Alexander Pope summed it up with...
...Tocqueville said: "In democratic times the public frequently treat authors as kings do their courtiers; they enrich and despise them ..." Few American authors are despised these days; few are very rich. They reflect the 20th century's leveling forces: economically-as well as literarily-most of them inhabit a great, grey middle stratum...
...exhibition was among the most comprehensive ever displayed. It was a delight of the sort that may result in later nightmares, however. Africa's master carvers were "masters" not in the Western but in a witch-doctor sense. Their purpose, mainly, was to carve objects for spirits to inhabit. Such artists never described, never analyzed, but only evoked. The spirits which African superstition demanded and African art evoked may be lonely as well as incomprehensible in Brooklyn, but they still weave powerful spells. It takes a dedicated collector to murmur, as one of the Brooklyn show's donors...
...fills other needs, than in Europe. It is a place set apart, a magical place, the only one where the past is encountered. When I returned to Paris, I ... was appalled by the dirt of ages that overlaid everything . . . We cannot escape the dead hand of the past. We inhabit a collection of open-air museums which are the antechambers to the museums themselves, and we enter without changing our climate...
...from their solid jobs to their solid neighborhoods, Mexico proliferates with the new rich, those who make money fast and like to spend it freely. In Mexico City's luxurious Pedregal and Lomas, in Guadalajara's fashionable lakeside Chapalita, on the suave green slopes of Cuernavaca, they inhabit glittering glass villas that are the last word in international-style architecture. They drive bright-colored Cadillacs and set a fast pace at the country clubs. Bedecked with diamonds and keen to be seen, they jam the opera for performances at which tickets cost more than at New York...