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In the 1920s dramatists attacked their subjects as if the inequities could be resolved. Some of the traditional optimism of America lurked behind most of the early plays. But not now. There is no conviction now that the problem will be solved.

Brooks Atkinson

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Brooks Atkinson
Age: 89 †
Born: 1894
Born: November 28
Died: 1984
Died: January 14
Author
Critic
Journalist
Bay State
Justin Brooks Atkinson
America
Optimism
Problem
Plays
Play
Conviction
Dramatists
Traditional
Lurked
Early
Inequities
Subjects
Resolved
Behinds
Attacked
Behind
Solved

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Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.
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The cult of nature is a form of patronage by people who have declared their materialistic independence from nature and do not have to struggle with nature every day of their lives.
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There is no joy so great as that of reporting that a good play has come to town.
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There should be a dash of the amateur in criticism. For the amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is not habit bound.
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Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.
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Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it logically ought to be.
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Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.
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Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.
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The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
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Poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
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In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.
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I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.
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We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the 11th hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.
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Writing is not an end in itself but life transmuted into radiance.
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Although birds coexist with us on this eroded planet, they live independently of us with a self-sufficiency that is almost a rebuke. In the world of birds a symposium on the purpose of life would be inconceivable. They do not need it. We are not that self-reliant. We are the ones who have lost our way.
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The evil that men do lives on the front pages of greedy newspapers, but the good is oft interred apathetically inside.
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Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught.
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This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, businessmen who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.
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In the ideal sense nothing is uninteresting there are only uninterested people.
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Say Yes to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say Yes to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say Yes to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to utopia.
Brooks Atkinson