one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be
 Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904). copy citation

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Author Henry Adams
Source Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres
Topic
Date 1904
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4584/pg4584-images.html

Context

“If this imperial presence is stamped on the architecture and the sculpture with an energy not to be mistaken, it radiates through the glass with a light and colour that actually blind the true servant of Mary. One becomes, sometimes, a little incoherent in talking about it; one is ashamed to be as extravagant as one wants to be; one has no business to labour painfully to explain and prove to one's self what is as clear as the sun in the sky; one loses temper in reasoning about what can only be felt, and what ought to be felt instantly, as it was in the twelfth century, even by the truie qui file and the ane qui vielle.” source