The Roots of Romanticism Quotes

“Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals.”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism

“Fontenelle was the most civilized man of his time, and indeed of most times.”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism

“he makes a vast contrast between nature, which is this elemental, capricious, perhaps causal, perhaps chance-directed entity, and man, who has morality, who distinguishes between desire and will, duty and interest, the right and the wrong, and acts accordingly, if need be against nature.”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism

“The only thing which can be regarded as properly tragic is resistance, resistance on the part of a man to whatever it is that oppresses him.”
― Isaiah Berlin, The Roots of Romanticism