"The artist was still the Gentleman, not yet the Genius. After the French Revolution, artists began to leave the salons and cénacles, which were fraternities of like-minded souls huddled at some place like the Café Guerbois rather than a town house; around some romantic figure, … [Read more...]

"And that was the final irony: that an intellectual establishment that had dedicated itself for thirty-five years to the Nonjudgmental gods of tolerance and open-mindedness should finish as an anti-intellectual cult of intolerance, propped up and held in place by a vast network … [Read more...]

"‘It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles,’ said Pope: ‘the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out’" [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 183.] … [Read more...]

"The phenomenon was in part merely an unpleasant by-product of mass education: a man who might have done no harm as a head footman a century or two ago can do tremendous harm as an assistant professor or a film critic." [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, … [Read more...]

"The same might have been said not only of Time itself but of most of the American popular press. All over the land of the free, hip little film critics were celebrating the exhibition of Mr. Ripploh’s lower orifices with the words and phrases they’d memorized while studying for … [Read more...]

"Just so. Mr. Forster was not a Philistine, but he was a stunted man, spiritually, emotionally, and professionally. He was one of those said creatures of the twentieth century who define themselves in terms of their own insufficiencies, and it was his tragedy-and ours, some may … [Read more...]

[A certain literary critic] "was charging through the corridors of beauty with a literary sledgehammer, taking wild swings at anything that smacked of nobility or purpose" [Bryan F. Griffin, Panic Among the Philistines (Chicago, Regnery Gateway, 1983), p. 119.] … [Read more...]