Offr

“Die Natur fesselte [in der Zeit der lateinischen Dekadenz] die Aufmerksamkeit nur durch ihre mirabilia; die Geschichte nur durch Begebenheiten, die sich in Reden als Illustration bewahrt hatten. Niemand dachte an eine Einheit der Wissenschaft, geschweige an mögliche Fortschritte der letzteren. Die Kritik war auf dem Tiefpunkte angelangt: man wußte eine Antwort auf jede Frage.

Rezension von: Henri-Irenee Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique. Paris: E. de Boccard 1938. XV, 620 S.”
― Walter Benjamin, Opere complete. VII. Scritti 1938-1949

“Wenn es nämlich wahr ist, daß der bei weitem größte Theil unserer Kernprovinzen früherhin sla­wisches und zumal polnisches Gebiet gewesen, und daß das Emporkommen der preußischen Monarchie wesentlich bedingt war durch Vorgänge, welche außer­halb Deutschland lagen, nämlich durch den Verfall Polens, und daß noch bis diesen Tag gegen 2 Mil­lionen Slawen in unseren Provinzen wohnen, mit welcher Stirn wagt man denn zu behaupten, daß Preußen ein rein deutscher Staat sei, der seinen eigentlichen Beruf in der Begründung der deutschen Einheit zu suchen habe?”
― Constantin Frantz, Von der Deutschen Föderation...

“To gain a first was to receive a passkey that was supposed to open doors at the top — especially in the Civil Service, in the Diplomatic Service, and in similar public careers. Historical research was only one of those many doors, and by no means the most important one. Here, the English preference for the talented all-rounder — the adaptable and gentlemanly member of a ruling class — made itself plain. Most holders of firsts did not expect to stay in Oxford or in other centers of research and teaching. They made their way to the wider world.

Nor was the final examination itself — and the undergraduate teaching that prepared for it — designed to foster any special skills in research. The essays that were written for tutors every week were usually read out to them at the beginning of the tutorial. They were twenty minutes to half an hour long and were expected to be successful rhetorical performances. They were trial runs for the answers that were expected in the final examination. One was encouraged to "think on ones feet" — to give quick (even entertaining) answers to complex questions, even if these answers bordered on the flip and the facile. These were the virtues of civil servants and journalists.”
― Peter Brown, Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History

“The rapid, but uniform motions of the heavenly bodies, serve well enough to typify the grand and continuous motions of the Miltonic mind. But the wild, giddy, fantastic, capricious, incalculable, springing, vaulting, tumbling, dancing, waltzing, caprioling, pirouetting, sky-rocketing of the chamois, the harlequin, the Vestris, the storm-loving raven — the raven? no, the lark (for often he ascends " singing up to heaven's gates," but like the lark he dwells upon the earth), in short, of the Proteus, the Ariel, the Mercury, the monster — John Paul, can be compared to nothing in heaven or earth, or the waters under the earth, except to the motions of the same faculty as existing in Shakspere.”
― De Quincey, Thomas