When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child
Johan HuizingaHistory, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.
Johan HuizingaThe things which can make life enjoyable remain the same. They are, now as before, reading, music, fine arts, travel, the enjoyment of nature, sports, fashion, social vanity (knightly orders, honorary offices, gatherings) and the intoxication of the senses.
Johan HuizingaWithout claiming superiority of intellectual over visual understanding, one is nevertheless bound to admit that the cinema allowsa number of รฆsthetic-intellectual means of perception to remain unexercised which cannot but lead to a weakening of judgment.
Johan Huizinga