“Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.” HumansMayLittlesHuman BeingsGeniusUnderstoodLaborChessEnterprisePastime Author:George Steiner
“Tragedy speaks not of secular dilemmas which may be resolved by rational innovation, but of the unalterable bias toward inhumanity and destruction in the drift of the world.” WorldMaySpeakDestructionTragedyInnovationRationalBiasSecularDilemmaInhumanity Author:George Steiner
“The capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity.” HumansMayRealMovingNextSoundHuman BeingsRoomsFictionMoralNovelRiskStreetsCryCapacityResponseContraryLinksAestheticBetrayImaginativeUrgentLimitlessCultivationInhumanityReflexesCovert Book:George Steiner: A Reader Source: George Steiner: A Reader
“He who has read Kafka's Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.” LooksMayMatterAbleMirrorsPrintAnnoyingIlliterateMetamorphosis Book:Language and Silence Source: Language and Silence
