If

It is difficult to imagine If being made today. The art house sensibility and the glorification of adolescent rebelliousness have become enduring thought cliches. But the denoument, the misunderstood and wrongfully repressed rebels mowing down their school masters and mates is impossible to stomach in light of a decade of school massacres, a la columbine. When it was written, it probably intended to shock because the slaughter was so outlandish, that one could only contemplate it as an outlandish allegory. Now that the allegory has been outstripped by reality, the slaughter does not shock and seems like grim exaltation. http://www.amazon.com/If-Criterion-Collection-Malcolm-McDowell/dp/B000OPPAEW

Two quotes by Samuel Johnson

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

and

People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.

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Churchil quote from"World Crisis"

Regarding his reorganization of the munitions ministry in 1917.



"Instead of struggling through the jungle on foot I rode comfortably on an elephant whose trunk could pick up a pin or uproot a tree with equal ease, and from whose back a wide scene lay open. "

A Piece of the Philadelphia Parkway Art Puzzle Falls Into Place

Art palace is right fit with Phila. | Inquirer | 09/02/2007

"In the Art Museum's new Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building, Philadelphia has at last acquired a modern civic building that is a true Philadelphian. *** Richard Gluckman's conversion of an opulent Roaring '20s office building into a safe house for the Philadelphia Museum of Art's most fragile collections reflects this town's essential verities: its commitment to craft over splash, substance over surface, and architecture with a strong work ethic."

And some day the Barnes Foundation will join it down the street and finally giving the Parkway a boulevard that one should want to stroll.

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