Quotessence
Home / Authors / Leon Wieseltier Biography
Leon Wieseltier

Leon Wieseltier Biography

Writer

Related Quotes

“...it's exemplification of our moment in American culture and American cultural journalism. It is an accurate document of the discourse of "takes." This movie, that book, this poem, that painting, this record, that show: Make a smart remark and move on. A take is an opinion that has no aspiration to a belief, an impression taht never hardens into a position. Its lightness is its appeal. It is provisional, evanescent, a move in a game, an accredited shallowness, a bulwark against a pause in the conversation. A take is expected not to be true but to be interesting, and even when it is interesting it makes no troublesome claim upon anybody's attention. Another take will quickly follow, and the silence that is a mark of perplexity, of research and reflection, will be mercifully kept at bay. A take asks for no affiliation. It requires no commitment.”

BeliefOpinionCriticismShallownessOn CriticismAbout Art
Author:Leon Wieseltier
Create image

“Philip Kitcher has composed the most formidable defense of the secular view of life since Dewey. Unlike almost all of contemporary atheism, Life After Faith is utterly devoid of cartoons and caricatures of religion. It is, instead, a sober and soulful book, an exemplary practice of philosophical reflection. Scrupulous in its argument, elegant in its style, humane in its spirit, it is animated by a stirring aspiration to wisdom. Even as I quarrel with it I admire it.”

BookSpiritViewsPracticeAtheismStyleReflectionArgumentPhilosophicalDefenseContemporaryAdmireAspirationSecularSoberCartoonElegantQuarrelsHumaneAnimatedStirringFormidableCaricaturesPhilipSoulfulExemplary
Author:Leon Wieseltier
Create image

“But even now, with the crates piled high in the hall, what I see most plainly about the books is that they are beautiful. They take up room? Of course they do: they are an environment; atoms, not bits. My books are not dead weight, they are live weight — matter infused by spirit, every one of them, even the silliest. They do not block the horizon; they draw it. They free me from the prison of contemporaneity: one should not live only in one’s own time. A wall of books is a wall of windows.”

ShouldBookMatterBeautifulSpiritCoursesBitsRoomsEnvironmentWallDrawsWindowWeightPrisonBlockHallsHorizonAtoms
Author:Leon Wieseltier
Create image