Evan Harmon - Memex

Sweetness and light

Sweetness and light is an English idiom that can be used in common speech, either as statement of personal happy consciousness, or as literal report on another person. Depending upon sense-of-humour, some may use the phrase with mild irony. For example: The two had been fighting for a month, but around others it was all sweetness and light. Esteemed humorous writer P. G. Wodehouse employed the phrase often, sometimes with a slight nod to the phrase's dual-edge. Originally, however, "sweetness and light" had a special use in literary and cultural criticism meaning "pleasing and instructive", which in classical theory was considered to be the aim and justification of poetry.
wikipedia:: Sweetness and light

Today, often used with Irony and sarcasm

Coined by Jonathan Swift.
Popularized by Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy

Pleasing and instructive
Beauty and intelligence
Aesthetic and Rational

Sweetness and light
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Sweetness and light
Dualism