This became Delacroix 's theme: that the achievements of the spirit all that a great library contained were the result of a state of society so delicately balanced that at the least touch they would be crushed beneath an avalanche of pent-up animal forces.
Kenneth ClarkOne musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
Kenneth ClarkThe dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.
Kenneth ClarkConventional nudes based on classical originals could bear no burden of thought or inner life without losing their formal completeness.
Kenneth ClarkNo nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals.
Kenneth ClarkHowever much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history the early phase on Republican virtue, the later on Imperial grandeur the fact remains that classicism depended on a fixed and rational philosophy; whereas the spirit of the Revolution was one of change and of emotion.
Kenneth Clark