“
Nothing's perfect, the world's not perfect. But it's there for us, trying the best it can; that's what makes it so damn beautiful.
”
”
Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 1)
“
Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
--Alexander Supertramp, May 1992
”
”
Christopher McCandless
“
Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.
”
”
Leonard Bernstein
“
Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all that a man can invent.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Love of Europa: Limited Time Edition (Only the First Chapters))
“
He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet’s fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women
”
”
August Strindberg (Madman's Defence)
“
Among those who have everything, I have never seen a family go to the seashore just to celebrate a political decision, because for them politics changes almost nothing. This is something I realized when I went to live in Paris, far away from you: the ruling class may complain about a left-wing government, they may complain about a right-wing government, but no government ever ruins their digestion, no government ever breaks their backs, no government ever inspires a trip to the beach. Politics never changes their lives, at least not much. What’s strange, too, is that they’re the ones who engage in politics, though it has almost no effect on their lives. For the ruling class, in general, politics is a question of aesthetics: a way of seeing themselves, of seeing the world, of constructing a personality. For us it was life or death.
”
”
Édouard Louis (Qui a tué mon père)
“
We are living in a moment where we have broken the equilibrium of the planet. We are not paying attention to our intuitive side. We only pay attention to our reason. We have become an urban animal
”
”
Sebastião Salgado
“
When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you're inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can't we feels the same way about beauty?
”
”
Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others)
“
She could afford anything, she could give anything, but she could not share a moment of her life with anybody. She
was a beautiful and a glamorous diamond with an astronomical price tag, but to a crude reality — she was still a stone, a living stone. Nothing else but a stone in an aesthetic sense.
”
”
Ravindra Shukla (A Maverick Heart: Between Love and Life)
“
You must never settle for someone who is not willing to swim in your tormented seas
-You are worthy of more than they are willing to give
”
”
Rhiley Jade (Drowning in Starlight)
“
A reverie is one soul's river -
a word is one heart's vein.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
Don't talk to me about aesthetics or tradition. Talk to me about what sells and what's good right now. And what the American people like is to think the underdog still has a chance.
”
”
George Steinbrenner
“
For we've all carried too much -
maybe that's why,
when we lay down something,
it feels like everything is leaving, and yet -
too much remains.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
We all begin to loose
once we stop hoping.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
Love is too much for our generation - that's why it dies in our hands but blooms at our feet.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists, neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.
”
”
Stanley Kubrick
“
It's like people don't only look good when they look like a magazine. People can be aesthetically beautiful in the way sunsets and leaves and things are.
”
”
Laura Tims (Please Don't Tell)
“
Historically, rose petals were valued for their medicinal qualities than their aesthetic qualities. Rose has antidepressant properties.
”
”
Amy Leigh Mercree (The Mood Book: Crystals, Oils, and Rituals to Elevate Your Spirit)
“
I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing - an interstellar kula chain - affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities of all the intelligent races in the galaxy - tying them together, building common traditions... The notion strikes me as kind of fine.
”
”
Roger Zelazny (Doorways in the Sand)
“
Spare’s drawings were always inspired by the New Aesthetic, the New Sexuality. They amount almost to masturbation in line; the line coils and curls upon itself and mounts the steep incline of ecstasy as the amazing sigils are woven into a complex web of dream. To follow closely the line of some of his Sabbatic drawings is to leave earth and dive obliquely between those spaces that Lovecraft celebrated in his nightmare tales. Such drawings are themselves the gateway to the Sabbath; one is drawn into a vortex and whirled down the funnel of consciousness which explodes into unknown worlds. Spare would not reveal the magical graphs that unsealed the cells of these eldritch dimensions…
”
”
Kenneth Grant (The Magical Revival)
“
Les esprits qui ont le sentiment du sublime sont entraînés insensiblement vers les sentiments élevés de l’amitié, du mépris du monde, de l’éternité, par le calme et le silence d’une soirée d’été, alors que la lumière tremblante des étoiles perce les ombres de la nuit, et que la lune solitaire paraît à l’horizon. Le jour brillant inspire l’ardeur du travail et le sentiment de la joie. Le sublime émeut, le beau charme.
”
”
Immanuel Kant (The Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (Critique of Judgement 1))
“
Touch has a memory," Will. Your man Keats said that.
Did he, now? Will looked up.
He did. If it had fit into his poem, I think he would have said taste and smell and sound have a memory, too.
Say more.
What more is there to say? He said what I've been saying. Aesthetics matter. Place matters. Our senses remember and replay these things back to us, to our fingers, or our nostrils, or our tongues."
(Conversation between Will and Joe.)
”
”
Will Willingham
“
Credința este lumina lui Dumnezeu care luminează înăuntrul omului.
”
”
Hans Urs von Balthasar (Seeing the Form (The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. 1))
“
I kept every letter - only to be remembered of the wrong one's words can cause (to the heart).
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
Love is too much for our generation.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
I dared to dance along broken lines
and I cut myself once again -
only to rewrite your words with meaning.
”
”
Laura Chouette
“
give me the light ; please take away the dark.
”
”
Eve Ainsworth (Tender)
“
For example, try to keep your living space clean and organized. Make your living space aesthetically and artistically beautiful. Have beautiful pictures at the wall, have lots of plants. Light incense and/or aromatherapy oils. If you are spiritually inclined, create spiritual altars in different places in your home with pictures of the Masters. Play beautiful inspiring music in the background, or meditation tapes.
”
”
Joshua D. Stone (The Golden Book of Melchizedek: How to Become an Integrated Christ/Buddha in This Lifetime Volume 1)
“
The starry sky began to shine,when assigned night spread with its ‘moon lamp’ for all of the wistful thoughts,lay below the tormented Earth’s nocturnal light and those splendid visions caught my pounding spirits.
”
”
Nithin Purple (Venus and Crepuscule)
“
Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed _sometimes_, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error. The scouts cared little for Henry's superhuman grace; insofar as they cared they were suckered-in aesthetes and shitty scouts. Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine.
”
”
Chad Harbach (The Art of Fielding)
“
[Martians] never let science crush the aesthetic and the beautiful. It’s all simply a matter of degree. An Earth Man thinks: "In that picture, color does not exist, really. A scientist can prove that color is only the way the cells are placed in a certain material to reflect light. Therefore, color is not really an actual part of
things I happen to see." A Martian, far cleverer, would say: “This is a fine picture. It came from the hand and the mind of a man inspired. Its idea and its color are from life. This thing is good.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles)
“
Hidden in the broom cupboard of Rose Cottage are two grand gates that lead to the loveliest little house you've ever seen. Nutmouse Hall. Shh, don't tell anyone... No one knows it's there...not even Arthur and Lucy who live in Rose Cottage.
This is the home of Tumtum and Nutmeg...
”
”
Emily Bearn
“
Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly — rather than merely ascertaining — that art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollinian-Dionysian duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation. I have borrowed my adjectives from the Greeks, who developed their mystical doctrines of art through plausible embodiments, not through purely conceptual means. It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split, as regards both origins and objectives, between the plastic, Apollinian arts and the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord that agon which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy of an Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient features of both parents.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy)
“
[M]echanization is incompatible with inspiration. [...] Among the many and enormous advantages of efficient automatic machinery is this: it is completely foolproof. But every gain has to be paid for: The automatic machine is fool-proof; but just because it is fool-proof it is also grace-proof. The man who tends such a machine is impervious to every form of aesthetic inspiration, whether of human or of genuinely spiritual origin. [...] The industrious bird or insect is inspired, when it works, by the infallible animal grace of instinct - by Tao as it manifests itself on the level immediately above the physiological. The industrial worker at his fool-proof and grace-proof machine does his job in a man-made universe of punctual automata - a universe that lies entirely beyond the pale of Tao on any level, brutal, human or spiritual.
”
”
Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)
“
Parker fixated on the envelope's precise penmanship as she lifted it. Her grandmother rarely took the time to write her own name in the return address, let alone give it the aesthetic attention that this one so seemed to demand. Once, when Parker questioned her on this, her grandmother casually asserted that she "didn't quite believe in envelopes" as if this were a debatable concept like Socialism or wearing white after Labor Day.
”
”
Abby Slovin (Letters In Cardboard Boxes)
“
The woman wins who calls herself beautiful and challenges the world to change to truly see her. A woman wins by giving herself and other women permission - to eat; to be sexual; to age; to wear overalls, a paste tiara, a Balenciaga gown, a second-hand opera cloak, or combat boots; to cover up to to go practically naked; to do whatever we choose in following - or ignoring - our own aesthetic. A woman wins when she feels that what each woman does with her own body - unforced, uncoerced - is her own business.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
...Pat wondered what inspiration an artist might find in the attempts of twenty-first-century architects to impose their phallic triumphs on the cityscape. Had any artist ever painted a contemporary glass block, for instance, or any other product of architectural brutalism that had laid its crude hands here and there upon the city?...If a building did not lend itself to being painted, then surely that must be because it was inherently ugly, whatever its claims to utility. And if it was ugly, then what was it doing in this delicately beautiful city?
”
”
Alexander McCall Smith (Bertie Plays the Blues (44 Scotland Street, #7))
“
The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form.
And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion.
That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.
”
”
Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning)
“
Anyone who does creative work is familiar with this problem, and in many ways active imagination is similar to writing, painting, and so on; all creative work entails a give-and-take between inspiration (unconscious) and execution (conscious). (As I am writing this, for example, I have to allow my intuitions expression before I can start editing them.) The difference for Jung is that the aesthetic quality of the end product isn’t important; understanding it is. Nevertheless, one of the best introductions to active imagination are the letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man by the poet Friedrich Schiller, a contemporary of Goethe, which discuss in detail the dialogue between the creative (unconscious) and critical (conscious) drives and their union in art, both creating and experiencing it.
”
”
Gary Lachman (Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life & Teachings)
“
We all have a blind spot around our privileges shaped exactly like us,” Junot Díaz has said, and it can create blindness to failures all around. 25 It results in the Einstellung effect: the cost of success is that it can block our ability to see when what has worked well in the past might not any longer. In the face of entrenched failure, there are limits to reason’s ability to offer us a way out. Play helps us to see things anew, as do safe havens. Yet the imagination inspired by an aesthetic encounter can get us to the point of surrender, making way for a new version of ourselves. Our reaction to aesthetic force, more easily than logic, is often how we accept with grace that the ground has shifted beneath our feet. 26 “Art is a journey into the most unknown thing of all—oneself,” architect Louis Kahn stated. “Nobody knows his own frontiers.
”
”
Sarah Lewis (The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery)
“
The supposedly eyewitness authority of the Pseudo-Turpin finds a parallel in another genre in which vernacular prose was pioneered: that of the historical memoir. There were twelfth-century verse histories narrated by authors who had personally participated in the events they describe, such as the Third Crusade. But the Fourth Crusade of 1202-4 saw a switch to prose. This shameful fiasco, in which the crusaders were induced to turn aside from the Holy Land and attack instead the Christian city of Constantinople, inspired two contrasting accounts. Robert de Clari--ignorant of higher-level strategy, but all agog at the splendours of Constantinople--gives a worm's eye view. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, by contrast, has a top diplomat's suave authority and a leader's eye for the aesthetics of war--the splendid sight of a fleet, or the noble heroism of a ruler. For both authors the medium of prose seems to convey the purported authenticity and transparency of lived experience.
”
”
Sarah Cay Terence Cave Malcolm Bowie
“
I love football. I love the aesthetics of football. I love the athleticism of football. I love the movement of the players, the antics of the coaches. I love the dynamism of the fans. I love their passion for their badge and the colour of their team and their country. I love the noise and the buzz and the electricity in the stadium. I love the songs. I love the way the ball moves and then it flows and the way a teams fortune rises and falls through a game and through a season. But what I love about football is that it brings people together across religious divides, geographic divides, political divides. I love the fact that for ninety minutes in a rectangular piece of grass, people can forget hopefully, whatever might be going on in their life, and rejoice in this communal celebration of humanity. The biggest diverse, invasive or pervasive culture that human kinds knows is football and I love the fact that at the altar of football human kind can come worship and celebrate.
”
”
Andy Harper
“
There is however, one reason why the arts so rarely accept a mission that IS within the power of the Church to alter. In the past, the densest or richest location of baptised art has been the Liturgy. The sacred use of the arts in the liturgical setting has provided inspiration for artists engaged in producing artworks for contexts outside the Liturgy, for consumption beyond the limits of the visible Church. In the modern West, the Muses have largely fled the liturgical amphitheatre, which instead is given over to banal language, poor quality popular music, and, in new and re-designed churches, a nugatory or sometimes totally absent visual art. This deprives the wider Christian mission of the arts of essential nourishment. Where would the poetry of Paul Claudel be without the Latin Liturgy? Or John Tavener's music without the Orthodox Liturgy? Where would be the entire tradition of representational art in the West without the liturgical art of which until the seventeenth century at least remained at its heart? We need today to summon back the Muses to the sacred foyer of the Church, to be at home again at that hearth.
”
”
Aidan Nichols (Redeeming Beauty: Soundings in Sacral Aesthetics)
“
While most of us go through life feeling that we are the thinker of our thoughts and the experiencer of our experience, from the perspective of science we know that this is a distorted view. There is no discrete self or ego lurking like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. There is no region of cortex or pathway of neural processing that occupies a privileged position with respect to our personhood. There is no unchanging “center of narrative gravity” (to use Daniel Dennett’s phrase). In subjective terms, however, there seems to be one — to most of us, most of the time.
Our contemplative traditions (Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc.) also suggest, to varying degrees and with greater or lesser precision, that we live in the grip of a cognitive illusion. But the alternative to our captivity is almost always viewed through the lens of religious dogma. A Christian will recite the Lord’s Prayer continuously over a weekend, experience a profound sense of clarity and peace, and judge this mental state to be fully corroborative of the doctrine of Christianity; A Hindu will spend an evening singing devotional songs to Krishna, feel suddenly free of his conventional sense of self, and conclude that his chosen deity has showered him with grace; a Sufi will spend hours whirling in circles, pierce the veil of thought for a time, and believe that he has established a direct connection to Allah.
The universality of these phenomena refutes the sectarian claims of any one religion. And, given that contemplatives generally present their experiences of self-transcendence as inseparable from their associated theology, mythology, and metaphysics, it is no surprise that scientists and nonbelievers tend to view their reports as the product of disordered minds, or as exaggerated accounts of far more common mental states — like scientific awe, aesthetic enjoyment, artistic inspiration, etc.
Our religions are clearly false, even if certain classically religious experiences are worth having. If we want to actually understand the mind, and overcome some of the most dangerous and enduring sources of conflict in our world, we must begin thinking about the full spectrum of human experience in the context of science.
But we must first realize that we are lost in thought.
”
”
Sam Harris
“
I’ve claimed—so far sort of vaguely—that what makes televisions hegemony so resistant to critique by the new Fiction of Image is that TV has coopted the distinctive forms of the same cynical, irreverent, ironic, absurdist post-WWII literature that the new Imagists use as touchstones. The fact is that TV’s re-use of postmodern cool has actually evolved as an inspired solution to the keep-Joe-at-once-alienated-from-and-part-of-the-million-eyed-crowd problem. The solution entailed a gradual shift from oversincerity to a kind of bad-boy irreverence in the Big Face that TV shows us. This in turn reflected a wider shift in U.S. perceptions of how art was supposed to work, a transition from art’s being a creative instantiation of real values to art’s being a creative rejection of bogus values. And this wider shift, in its turn, paralleled both the development of the postmodern aesthetic and some deep and serious changes in how Americans chose to view concepts like authority, sincerity, and passion in terms of our willingness to be pleased. Not only are sincerity and passion now “out,” TV-wise, but the very idea of pleasure has been undercut. As Mark C. Miller puts it, contemporary television “no longer solicits our rapt absorption or hearty agreement, but—like the ads that subsidize it—actually flatters us for the very boredom and distrust it inspires in us.” 24
”
”
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
“
It's evident that with Beethoven the Romantic Revolution had already begun, bringing with it the new Artist, the artist as Priest and Prophet. This new creator had a new self-image: he felt himself possessed of divine rights, of almost Napoleonic powers and liberties — especially the liberty to break rules and make new ones, to invent new forms and concepts, all in the name of greater expressivity. His mission was to lead the way to a new aesthetic world, confident that history would follow his inspirational leadership. And so there exploded onto the scene Byron, Jean Paul, Delacroix, Victor Hugo, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz — all proclaiming new freedoms.
Where music was concerned, the new freedoms affected formal structures, harmonic procedures, instrumental color, melody, rhythm — all of these were part of a new expanding universe, at the center of which lay the artist's personal passions. From the purely phonological point of view, the most striking of these freedoms was the new chromaticism, now employing a vastly enriched palette, and bringing with it the concomitant enrichment of ambiguity. The air was now filled with volcanic, chromatic sparks. More and more the upper partials of the harmonic series were taking on an independence of their own, playing hide-and-seek with their sober diatonic elders, like defiant youngsters in the heyday of revolt.
”
”
Leonard Bernstein (The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard)
“
Your story isn’t powerful enough if all it does is lead the horse to water; it has to inspire the horse to drink, too. On social media, the only story that can achieve that goal is one told with native content. Native content amps up your story’s power. It is crafted to mimic everything that makes a platform attractive and valuable to a consumer—the aesthetics, the design, and the tone. It also offers the same value as the other content that people come to the platform to consume. Email marketing was a form of native content. It worked well during the 1990s because people were already on email; if you told your story natively and provided consumers with something they valued on that platform, you got their attention. And if you jabbed enough to put them in a purchasing mind-set, you converted. The rules are the same now that people spend their time on social media. It can’t tell you what story to tell, but it can inform you how your consumer wants to hear it, when he wants to hear it, and what will most make him want to buy from you. For example, supermarkets or fast-casual restaurants know from radio data that one of the ideal times to run an ad on the radio is around 5:00 P.M., when moms are picking up the kids and deciding what to make for dinner, and even whether they have the energy to cook. Social gives you the same kind of insight. Maybe the data tells you that you should post on Facebook early in the morning before people settle
”
”
Gary Vaynerchuk (Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World)
“
[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of.
Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property.
...
A mafia state, in Magyar's definition, was different from other states ruled by one person surrounded by a small elite. In a mafia state, the small powerful group was structured just like a family. The center of the family is the patriarch, who does not govern: "he disposes--of positions, wealth, statuses, persons." The system works like a caricature of the Communist distribution economy. The patriarch and his family have only two goals: accumulating wealth and concentrating power. The family-like structure is strictly hierarchical, and membership in it can be obtained only through birth or adoption. In Putin's case, his inner circle consisted of men with whom he grew up in the streets and judo clubs of Leningrad, the next circle included men with whom he had worked with in the KGB/FSB, and the next circle was made up of men who had worked in the St. Petersburg administration with him. Very rarely, he 'adopted' someone into the family as he did with Kholmanskikh, the head of the assembly shop, who was elevated from obscurity to a sort of third-cousin-hood. One cannot leave the family voluntarily: one can only be kicked out, disowned and disinherited. Violence and ideology, the pillars of the totalitarian state, became, in the hands of the mafia state, mere instruments.
The post-communist mafia state, in Magyar's words, is an "ideology-applying regime" (while a totalitarian regime is 'ideology-driven'). A crackdown required both force and ideology. While the instruments of force---the riot police, the interior troops, and even the street-washing machines---were within arm's reach, ready to be used, ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin's ideological repertoire had consisted of the word 'stability,' a lament for the loss of the Soviet empire, a steady but barely articulated restoration of the Soviet aesthetic and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, and general statements about the United States and NATO, which had cheated Russia and threatened it now. All these components had been employed during the 'preventative counter-revolution,' when the country, and especially its youth, was called upon to battle the American-inspired orange menace, which threatened stability. Putin employed the same set of images when he first responded to the protests in December. But Dugin was now arguing that this was not enough.
At the end of December, Dugin published an article in which he predicted the fall of Putin if he continued to ignore the importance of ideas and history.
”
”
Masha Gessen (The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia)
“
After Us, the Salamanders!, The Future belongs to the Newts, Newts Mean Cultural Revolution. Even if they don't have their own art (they explained) at least they are not burdened with idiotic ideals, dried up traditions and all the rigid and boring things taught in schools and given the name of poetry, music, architecture, philosophy and culture in any of its forms. The word culture is senile and it makes us sick. Human art has been with us for too long and is worn-out and if the newts have never fallen for it we will make a new art for them. We, the young, will blaze the path for a new world of salamandrism: we wish to be the first newts, we are the salamanders of tomorrow! And so the young poetic movement of salamandrism was born, triton - or tritone - music was composed and pelagic painting, inspired by the shape world of jellyfish, fish and corals, made its appearance. There were also the water regulating structures made by the newts themselves which were discovered as a new source of beauty and dignity. We've had enough of nature, the slogans went; bring on the smooth, concrete shores instead of the old and ragged cliffs! Romanticism is dead; the continents of the future will be outlined with clean straight lines and re-shaped into conic sections and rhombuses; the old geological must be replaced with a world of geometry. In short, there was once again a new trend that was to be the thing of the future, a new aesthetic sensation and new cultural manifestoes; anyone who failed to join in with the rise of salamandrism before it was too late felt bitterly that he had missed his time, and he would take his revenge by making calls for the purity of mankind, a return to the values of the people and nature and other reactionary slogans. A concert of tritone music was booed off the stage in Vienna, at the Salon des Indépendents in Paris a pelagic painting called Capriccio en Bleu was slashed by an unidentified perpetrator; salamandrism was simply victorious, and its rise was unstoppable.
”
”
Karel Čapek (War with the Newts)
“
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads.
Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them.
Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection.
Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol.
No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds.
Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!"
The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it.
The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.
”
”
Beth Harbison (The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship)
“
The society’s ‘look’ is a self-publicizing one. The American flag itself bears witness to this by its omnipresence, in fields and built-up areas, at service stations, and on graves in the cemeteries, not as a heroic sign, but as the trademark of a good brand. It is simply the label of the finest successful international enterprise, the US. This explains why the hyperrealists were able to paint it naively, without either irony or protest (Jim Dine in the sixties), in much the same way as Pop Art gleefully transposed the amazing banality of consumer goods on to its canvases. There is nothing here of the fierce parodying of the American anthem by Jimi Hendrix, merely the light irony and neutral humour of things that have become banal, the humour of the mobile home and the giant hamburger on the sixteen-foot long billboard, the pop and hyper humour so characteristic of the atmosphere of America, where things almost seem endowed with a certain indulgence towards their own banality. But they are indulgent towards their own craziness too. Looked at more generally, they do not lay claim to being extraordinary; they simply are extraordinary. They have that extravagance which makes up odd, everyday America. This oddness is not surrealistic (surrealism is an extravagance that is still aesthetic in nature and as such very European in inspiration); here, the extravagance has passed into things. Madness, which with us is subjective, has here become objective, and irony which is subjective with us has also turned into something objective. The fantasmagoria and excess which we locate in the mind and the mental faculties have passed into things themselves.
Whatever the boredom, the hellish tedium of the everyday in the US or anywhere else, American banality will always be a thousand times more interesting than the European - and especially the French - variety. Perhaps because banality here is born of extreme distances, of the monotony of wide-open spaces and the radical absence of culture. It is a native flower here, asis the opposite extreme, that of speed and verticality, of an excess that verges on abandon, and indifference to values bordering on immorality, whereas French banality is a hangover from bourgeois everyday life, born out of a dying aristocratic culture and transmuted into petty-bourgeois mannerism as the bourgeoisie shrank away throughout the nineteenth century. This is the crux: it is the corpse of the bourgeoisie that separates us. With us, it is that class that is the carrier of the chromosome of banality, whereas the Americans have succeeded in preserving some humour in the material signs of manifest reality and wealth.
This also explains why Europeans experience anything relating to statistics as tragic. They immediately read in them their individual failure and take refuge in a pained denunciation of the merely quantitative. The Americans, by contrast, see statistics as an optimistic stimulus, as representing the dimensions of their good fortune, their joyous membership of the majority. Theirs is the only country where quantity can be extolled without compunction.
”
”
Baudrillard, Jean
“
Fascism rested not upon the truth of its doctrine but upon the leader’s mystical union with the historic destiny of his people, a notion related to romanticist ideas of national historic flowering and of individual artistic or spiritual genius, though fascism otherwise denied romanticism’s exaltation of unfettered personal creativity. The fascist leader wanted to bring his people into a higher realm of politics that they would experience sensually: the warmth of belonging to a race now fully aware of its identity, historic destiny, and power; the excitement of participating in a vast collective enterprise; the gratification of submerging oneself in a wave of shared feelings, and of sacrificing one’s petty concerns for the group’s good; and the thrill of domination. Fascism’s deliberate replacement of reasoned debate with immediate sensual experience transformed politics, as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the first to point out, into aesthetics. And the ultimate fascist aesthetic experience, Benjamin warned in 1936, was war.
Fascist leaders made no secret of having no program. Mussolini exulted in that absence. “The Fasci di Combattimento,” Mussolini wrote in the “Postulates of the Fascist Program” of May 1920, “. . . do not feel tied to any particular doctrinal form.” A few months before he became prime minister of Italy, he replied truculently to a critic who demanded to know what his program was: “The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo. And the sooner the better.” “The fist,” asserted a Fascist militant in 1920, “is the synthesis of our theory.” Mussolini liked to declare that he himself was the definition of Fascism. The will and leadership of a Duce was what a modern people needed, not a doctrine. Only in 1932, after he had been in power for ten years, and when he wanted to “normalize” his regime, did Mussolini expound Fascist doctrine, in an article (partly ghostwritten by the philosopher Giovanni Gentile) for the new Enciclopedia italiana. Power came first, then doctrine. Hannah Arendt observed that Mussolini “was probably the first party leader who consciously rejected a formal program and replaced it with inspired leadership and action alone.”
Hitler did present a program (the 25 Points of February 1920), but he pronounced it immutable while ignoring many of its provisions. Though its anniversaries were celebrated, it was less a guide to action than a signal that debate had ceased within the party. In his first public address as chancellor, Hitler ridiculed those who say “show us the details of your program. I have refused ever to step before this Volk and make cheap promises.”
Several consequences flowed from fascism’s special relationship to doctrine. It was the unquestioning zeal of the faithful that counted, more than his or her reasoned assent. Programs were casually fluid. The relationship between intellectuals and a movement that despised thought was even more awkward than the notoriously prickly relationship of intellectual fellow travelers with communism. Many intellectuals associated with fascism’s early days dropped away or even went into opposition as successful fascist movements made the compromises necessary to gain allies and power, or, alternatively, revealed its brutal anti-intellectualism. We will
meet some of these intellectual dropouts as we go along. Fascism’s radical instrumentalization of truth explains why fascists never bothered to write any casuistical literature when they changed their program, as they did often and without compunction. Stalin was forever writing to prove that his policies accorded somehow with the principles of Marx and Lenin; Hitler and Mussolini never bothered with any such theoretical justification. Das Blut or la razza would determine who was right.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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There was a product which seemed attractive, expensive, portable, beautiful and simple. Everybody talked about its beauty but they bought it for it's simplicity.
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Amit Kalantri
“
You and your friends played a big role in the aesthetic sensibility bred in the anarchist milieu in the early 2000s. While most anarchists and radicals were occupied with identity politics, accountability processes, justice, and ethical living and consumption, you and your friends started projects that had a more nihilist bent. Queer hedonism and negation, ‘doing-being totally out of control’. What inspired this turn, and what were you guys doing? The aesthetic sensibility we bred corresponded with the (re-)emergence of the hipster. While the hipster identity was about separating oneself out into a certain identity, to us it was more about being able to become anything. To welcome the power that comes with being malleable. To turn this weak metropolitan subject against itself. There were university occupations across the country, at the New School, in California, mini-riots across the Midwest and in the South. That also corresponded to the English translation of The Invisible Committee’s The Coming Insurrection, which was an important moment. Notably, that book was the same blue as Obama’s branding, and was a book instead of some zine somewhere. The new interest in insurrectionist aesthetics beyond the anarchist milieu provided a sort of opening. Part of the program behind Institute for Experimental Freedom, why I made all this aesthetic crap, why Politics is Not a Banana was a bright-ass pink book, was to take advantage of this opening.
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”
Anonymous
“
The aesthetics alone are inspiring. New York–based photographer Richard Barnes, best known for his starkly artistic portraits of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s cabin, released a captivating collection of black-and-white images of starling flocks over Rome in 2005. His photos are carefully framed against urban horizons. Some are simply beautiful, others sinister and Hitchcockian, but all are somehow magnetic (more on that later). In a statement accompanying Barnes’s images, author Jonathan Rosen observes, “Part of the fascination of the starlings is the way they seem to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if only we could read it.
”
”
Noah Strycker (The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human)
“
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to
use a beautiful piece of wood on the back.
For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
”
”
Albert Goodman (Greatest Inspirational Quotes: 1000 Days of Inspiring Quotes and Contemplations to Discover Your Inner Strength and Transform Your Life)
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only sport known to have inspired an indignant left-wing poem. It was written by one Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn in 1915. The golf links lie so near the mill That almost every day The laboring children can look out And see the men at play. Just show me an indignant left-wing poem about softball or bungee jumping. And our local mill has been converted to a shopping mall, so the kids are still there. Golf is also the only sport God is known to play. God and Saint Peter are out on Sunday morning. On the first hole God drives into a water hazard. The waters part and God chips onto the green. On the second hole God takes a tremendous whack and the ball lands ten feet from the pin. There’s an earthquake, one side of the green rises up, and the ball rolls into the cup. On the third hole God lands in a sand trap. He creates life. Single-cell organisms develop into fish and then amphibians. Amphibians crawl out of the ocean and evolve into reptiles, birds, and furry little mammals. One of those furry little mammals runs into the sand trap, grabs God’s ball in its mouth, scurries over, and drops it in the hole. Saint Peter looks at God and says, “You wanna play golf or you wanna fuck around?” And golf courses are beautiful. Many people think mature men have no appreciation for beauty except in immature women. This isn’t true, and, anyway, we’d rather be playing golf. A golf course is a perfect example of Republican male aesthetics—no fussy little flowers, no stupid ornamental shrubs, no exorbitant demands for alimony, just acre upon acre of lush green grass that somebody else has to mow. Truth, beauty, and even poetry are to be found in golf. Every man, when he steps up to the tee, feels, as Keats has it … Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men Look’d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. That is, the men were silent. Cortez was saying, “I can get on in two, easy. A three-wood drive, a five-iron from the fairway, then a two-putt max. But if I hook it, shit, I’m in the drink.” EAT THE RICH
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P.J. O'Rourke (Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader)
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When you're inside of your home, it should feel like your sanctuary. A haven for comfort, inspiration, safety, and love.
Invest in ways to create that type of atmosphere for yourself. Aesthetically and security-wise.
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Robin S. Baker
“
I readily admit that I am not a minimalist. I find solace in the fact that the traditional Japanese minimal aesthetic was made possible by the equally traditional kura (storehouse) where the items not in use or on display in the home would be kept. I like being surrounded by things that inspire me and allow me to start new projects instantly. I know it’s wrong, but I do judge people. An obsession with minimalism has always smacked to me of a romanticism of poverty (and potentially an outdated one at that) from a wealthy perspective. I think of Marie Antoinette having a little farm built on the castle grounds so that she could play at being a peasant shepherdess. Considered minimalism in this day and age is generally a pastime for those with the affluence to buy (or rebuy) what they need, when they need it. The considered minimalist needn’t be as resourceful about keeping things around “just in case,” because, at any moment, he or she can replenish the shelves with abundance.
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Clara Parkes (A Stash of One's Own: Knitters on Loving, Living with, and Letting go of Yarn)
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the universe. Obviously, such a theology was perfectly suited to revive ancient Platonic and Pythagorean doctrines to search for symmetries and harmony in the cosmos. Even if not all ideas inspired by this vision turned out to be fruitful or correct, this search for simple, rational, and aesthetically pleasing explanations of natural phenomena evolved into a lasting influence on how science is practiced until today.
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Heinrich Päs (The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics)
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Remember, design isn't just about aesthetics, it's about functionality too. Keep it simple, intuitive and effective. Inspired by "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
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Steve Jobs (Steve Jobs Graduation Speech)
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While not inherently "green" in the current sense of ecology, Zen evidences quite a number of core qualities and values that can be considered ecofriendly and help it serve as a model for new theories that address problems of conservation and pollution control. Traditional Japanese society is characterized by an approach based on healthy, efficient, and convenient living derived from a mental outlook that makes the most of minimal natural resources. Zen particularly endorses the values of simplicity, in that monks enter the Samgha Hall only with robes, bowls, and a few other meager possessions; thrift, by making a commitment to waste nothing; and communal manual labor, such that through a rotation of chores everyone contributes to the upkeep of the temple. The image of dedicated monks sweeping the wood floors of the hallways by rushing along on their hands in a semi-prostrate position is inspiring. Furthermore, the monastic system's use of human and material resources, including natural space, is limited and spare in terms of temple layout, the handling of administrative duties and chores, and the use of stock items. The sparse, spartan, vegetarian Zen cook, who prepares just enough rice gruel for his fellow monks but not a grain too much or too little, demonstrates an inherent—if not necessarily deliberate—conservationist approach. The minimalist aesthetic of rock gardens highlights the less-is-more Zen outlook that influenced the "Buddhist economics" evoked by E. F. Schumacher in Small Is Beautiful.
”
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Steven Heine (Zen Skin, Zen Marrow: Will the Real Zen Buddhism Please Stand Up?)
“
Kanye West's influence extends far beyond the confines of music, resonating deeply in the realms of fashion and pop culture. His merchandise, often referred to simply as "Kanye West merch," has become a significant cultural phenomenon, reflecting his unique aesthetic and visionary approach.
Kanye's venture into merchandise began with his concert tours, where limited-edition items became coveted symbols of fandom. The 2013 "Yeezus" tour marked a turning point, with merch that blended gothic motifs and bold graphics, creating a distinctive style that would define his future collections. Fans eagerly lined up for hours to grab a piece of Kanye's world, often reselling items at a premium, further cementing the status of his merch as not just apparel, but collector's items.
In 2016, the "Life of Pablo" pop-up shops took this to a new level. Located in various global cities, these shops sold minimalist, streetwear-inspired pieces emblazoned with religious and personal iconography. The launch was a testament to Kanye's marketing genius and his ability to create a buzz that transcends traditional retail methods. The immediate sell-out of these items showcased his knack for blending exclusivity with mass appeal.
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”
kanye west Merch
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The more we understand about the culturally dominant voices telling us what an aesthetically ideal home/wardrobe/life should look like, and wear the inspiration for perfection comes from in the first place, the more we can learn to trust ourselves instead of falling pray to the culturally constructed need to buy our way into happiness.
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Sara Petersen
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To say that color is waves of light and nothing more is pointless. Existence produces its own beauty for itself, and appreciates it by itself.
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SEKIDA KATSUKI (ZA ZEN)
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Fewer new cars / more connections
Less shopping / more gardens
Less status / more reforestation
Less power / more genuine hugs
Less hatred / more being
Fewer medications / more love
Fewer possessions / more regeneration
Less having / more feeling
Less censorship / more inspiration
Fewer disputes / more empathy
Less formality / more humor
Less chaos / more peace
Less aesthetics / more depth
And so I fly.
”
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Daniel Gumiero
“
A great perfume can express the intangible, but essential, intentions of a designer and convey the constant, enduring, and driving identity of the fashion house. It was through Marc Rosen's advocacy that I came to realize that the greatest modern perfume bottles were an art reflecting art. They exist as design objects in their own right, but are directly responsive to the composition of the scents they hold. A perfume, based on a series of layers and combinations of scent and composed of "notes" in a system that is at once science and subjectivity, is dependent on the sensory and the intuitive. With evocative qualities that are an amalgam of references framing it conceptually, a perfume can inspire possibilities of representation through graphics and the form of its flacon. Perfume bottles reside at the intersection of aesthetics and technology. They are, at their most artful, the sculptural manifestations of the ideas, emotions, and poetry elicited by a fragrance.
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Marc Rosen (Glamour Icons: Perfume Bottle Design by Marc Rosen)
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My artistic aesthetic is very much inspired by: “every reception of a work of art is both an interpretation and a performance of it, because in every reception the work takes on a fresh perspective for itself”. (Umberto Eco - The Poetics of the Open Work//1966).
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Des Kilfeather
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I love deeply and admire the beauties of life and its expression in many different art forms. I am an aesthetic philosopher.
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Debasish Mridha
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The very notion that beauty is something we need to be protected from is insulting. [...] When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you're inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can't we feel the same way about beauty? Feminism would have us apologize for having that reaction. It wants to replace aesthetics with politics, and to the extent it's succeeded, it's impoverished us.
Being in the presence of a world-class beauty can be as thrilling as listening to a world class soprano. Gifted individuals aren't the only ones who benefit from their gifts; we all do. Or, I should say, we all can. Depriving ourselves of that opportunity would be a crime.
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Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others)
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A person’s life is a bounded thing that must end. We will leave this earth with unfinished business. Regardless of the outcome of this writing project, I toyed with it long enough. I reconnoitered the world of fantasy and reality, manipulated ideas into sentences, and linked sentences into paragraphs. I peered into the past, weighed the present, and calculated the ramifications of living to experience the future. I told personal lies searching for universal truths and took ample liberty of the notion of an artistic license to make believe. I kicked the dirt, gazed into the sky, and sat under a tree waiting for inspiration. I examined my capacity for mental stagnation and self-deception. I meditated on the aesthetics of despair. I traveled many mental tributaries, and exhausted myself exploring worlds made of vapor. What I was once certain about I am now full of doubt. What I once doubted I now trust. I wrote the way a drunken man walks, rambling, staggering, jerking, and falling down. I retraced my steps to find my way back to the beginning, and erased my steps to arrive at the finale. Thankfully, the ending is coming, and I am finally ready.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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An admirer of architects Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Mr. Vignelli moved to New York from Italy in the mid-1960s hoping to propagate a design aesthetic inspired by their ideal of functional beauty. He preached clarity and coherence and practiced it with intense discipline in everything he turned out, whether kitchenware, public signage, books, or home interiors.
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Anonymous
“
I absolutely treasure this uniqueness, this brilliant originative impression, that I have surrounded within my imaginative curiosity. I'm gonna prevail and continue the aesthetic uniqueness of myself.
I'm gonna become the next modern D.L. Lewis.
I will stay calm, keep smiling, let doubters keep doubting themselves, and keep God as my number one superiority. Nothing will be impossible! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
”
”
D.L. Lewis
“
If you’ve ever suffered the accusations of people who objectified you as an emblem of darkness, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been haunted by the opinions of your friends, it wasn’t your fault. If they’ve ever assumed the worst of you, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been judged by your own parents, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been treated as an outcast, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever made a decision based on an opinion, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been labeled, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been stuck in the middle of a love triangle, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been heartbroken, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever cried yourself to sleep, it wasn’t your fault.
As you suffered and grew up, your soul got stained, your heart got shattered and your body paralyzed, which drove you into a deep state of slow sleep. As you opened your eyes, the atrocities of your past were glistening over your eyes and you knew, you had lost yourself in a place of utter darkness, but there was learning to be done in the cold dark. Like seeds of plants shaded by dirt, you twitched with the want to rise. As you grew tired of the shadows, you climbed into a world that was finally making room for light. Room for you and for all your truth. You ignited not in the light but in the distant shadows of the dark. In your chaos, you found clarity. In your suffering, you found purpose. You didn’t ignore the pain. You gave it reason. You used it. You reveled in it. As you began your journey to redefine yourself in misery and pain, your heart grew fonder but you didn’t give up. As stones of suffering came to dance, your feet took flight, the sun tried to burn you down, but God threw a shadow over the horizon and you saw a ray of hope and chased your way over the mightiest slopes. For a long time, you thought being different was a negative thing; but as you grew older, you started to realize that you were born to stand out, not blend in. Now, when people put a label on you, you find comfort in your true self because, in the end, you are proud to be who you’re. You’re a survivor. You and I come from completely different places, our world is a parallel space and we speak different languages, but one thing I’m sure of is that my heart beats the same as yours.
At end of the day, we’re all meant to be who we are; Our True Selves.
”
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Kamil Alvi
“
I hope you don't get stuck in the atrocities of your past. For others, it may just be a story but for people like us, it's the epitome of scars and a mountain of insurmountable obstacles.
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Kamil Alvi
“
I wonder what brought us here?
The analogy of our situation or the void we want to fill? Perhaps, our previous journey was a complete sham; both stuck in the atrocities of the past; impotent to move on from our former grievances and after all this time, we meet again. Maybe, this time it will be different; maybe this time we won't repeat the same mistakes we made; maybe this time we'll do better; maybe this time we'll be better.
But what if we didn't? What if this contemporary start of our new era destroyed us now more than ever? The question begs itself and the rest is silence!
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Kamil Alvi
“
Logic requires knowledge.
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Kamil Alvi
“
You are on the edge of the escarpment, confused whether to dive into a new chapter of life or immerse in the story of your past.
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Kamil Alvi
“
If the desacralization of logic pulls the rug of truth from under our feet, we still have beauty to guide our way. Aesthetics transcends logic; it comes from deep within the bowels of the mountain chain. The foundations of our future may be aesthetical: that which inspires and feeds the soul; that which is conducive to happiness and harmony.
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Bernardo Kastrup (Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us about the Nature of Reality)
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He has developed an aesthete's appreciation for the knavishness, the guile, the selfish cleverness of so many of his clients, appreciating human misbehavior for its miserable creativity. In almost every criminal case, there is a moment that combines inspired imagination with sheer audacity in a way that leaves Stern gasping, and full of perverse admiration for conduct he knows he would never have the courage to attempt.
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Scott Turow (The Last Trial (Kindle County Legal Thriller, #11))
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Asoka World School is a reputed international school in Kochi affiliated with CBSE. We have a student-friendly environment and has a very interesting syllabus. The STEM enriched curriculum helps to provide an in-depth learning experience for the students. We have a wide range of extracurricular activities for nurturing and developing a child’s creativity and imagination. Asoka World School can be an ideal option for your child. Here are some key reasons why Asoka World School is the best for your kid.
Individualized attention in classes:
Our student-teacher ratio arrangement is standardised in such a way that teachers are able to give individual attention to each child. Our teachers are well educated, experienced and constantly inspires their students. We follow the golden teacher-student ratio of 1:20. This helps students to gain the concepts of each subject easily hence they become more confident. This also enriches their knowledge, and they get more quality time to interact with their teachers.
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Child Safe Environment:
At Asoka World School, you will find your child is in extremely safe hands. Our classrooms are aesthetically designed and technologically equipped to disseminate learning through very many fun ways. Asoka World School has a world-class building design, infrastructure, fully integrated wireless network, climate-controlled smart classrooms, security features and no compromise hygiene and safeguarding policy that offers everything you have been dreaming for your child.
Updated Curriculums:
We have 4 levels of programmes prepared for our children.
Foundational - KG - IInd
Preparatory - IIIrd - Vth
Middle School - VIth - VIIIth
Senior School - IXth - XIIth
These programs are framed by our school to focus on developing various vital skills in the students. Our teachers adopt a customised teaching approach that can help students of every category. Our flexible curriculum enhances the communication between the teachers and students to a great extent. Our school has result-oriented teaching methods, qualified and responsible teaching staff to help facilitate a learning environment that is both safe and nurturing. As the best CBSE school in Kochi, Asoka World School is a leader in its sector and we hope to continue rising and come out as the best school in Kochi.
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AWS Kochi
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Since the development of mathematics is often inspired and guided by aesthetic considerations, mathematics can be described as “amphibious”: It is both a science and one of the humanities.
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Anonymous
“
Your skin has a memory.
In ten, twenty, thirty years from now,
your skin will show the results of
how it was treated today.
So treat it kindly and with respect.
”
”
Jana Elston
“
Reading books makes us more attentive to our personage and the aesthetic world that we live in. Writers that we idolize use language, logic, and nuance to paint physical and emotional scenes with refined precision. A writer’s use of vivid language creates lingering aftereffects that work their wonder on the reader’s malleable mind. A stirred mind resurrects our semiconscious memories; it causes us to summon up enduring images of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Just as importantly, inspirational writing makes us recognize our own telling character traits and identify our formerly unexpressed thoughts and feelings.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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Petra is one of the densest palimpsests of human history. Layer upon layer of archaeological remains provide evidence of a fascinating story that stretches back for thousands of years. It is a masterpiece of human achievement, an aesthetic and architectural marvel, and the source of a huge amount of inspiration since the 19th century. One of the oldest settlements in the region, the site has a long biography tracing Neolithic, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader periods of history. Petra acquired a cosmopolitan atmosphere, as local communities were exposed to a number of different cultural influences. Petra’s
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Charles River Editors (Petra: The History of the Rose City, One of the New Seven Wonders of the World)
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If it isn’t already obvious, the implications are breathtaking: the basis of Nicolelis’s research implies that someday, humans might be wired together for collective intelligence. A Brainet of a sculptor, an architect, an ecologist, an engineer, and a dancer could combine their experience and knowledge to design a new kind of building that is aesthetically pleasing, beneficial for the environment, and able to nourish and inspire the people who live and work inside it.
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Amy Webb (The Signals Are Talking: Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream)
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There is no perfect number of socks to own; there is no specific aesthetic which is better than another, no type of hobby that a minimalist ought to partake in. As one of our favorite saying goes, "You do you." Own your life, Celebrate it. Make it beautiful, make it inspiring, and make it work for you.
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Cary Telander Fortin (New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living)
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Much will have been gained for aesthetics once we have succeeded in apprehending directly — rather than merely ascertaining — that art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollinian-Dionysian duality, even as the propagation of the species depends on the duality of the sexes, their constant conflicts and periodic acts of reconciliation. I have borrowed my adjectives from the Greeks, who developed their mystical doctrines of art through plausible embodiments, not through purely conceptual means. It is by those two art sponsoring deities, Apollo and Dionysus, that we are made to recognize the tremendous split, as regards both origins and objectives, between the plastic, Apollinian arts and the nonvisual art of music inspired by Dionysus. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord that agon which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy of an Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient features of both parents.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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There’s nothing more genuinely aesthetic and beautiful than to love people—love profoundly, love without reason. Love heals, restores, renews and saves! Be kind, be love!
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Princess Dr. Mercy Uwakwe
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Writing is a very spiritual aspect of my life because stories were what originally gave me the desire to seek God with everything in my power. Fairy tales, great fantasy stories, and classics, they all helped me understand certain concepts in the Bible, such as developing and keeping a child-like wonder. They gave me examples of what Christ-like sacrifice looked like. I believe those stories glorify God in some way.
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Courtney Kleefeld (A Prayer Book for Writers)
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There’s nothing more genuinely aesthetic and beautiful than to love people—love profoundly, love without reason.
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Princess Dr. Mercy Uwakwe
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It would be some while yet before the sea became, as it is today, a thing of great romance- the archetype of the sublime, that philosophical quality of natural creations that manages to combine the magnificent and the horrific at the same time. Mountain chains with their jaggedly vicious peaks and sheer cliffs, and the dangers of rockfalls and avalanches and lashing storms, are classic examples of the sublime, presenting an aesthetic that inspires awe and reverence. The sea eventually came to be seen as much the same- a thing possessed of an awesome mightiness, a lethal beauty, of which one might be fearful and respective and overcome by, all at the same instant. Come the end of the eighteenth century and the sea was not longer an inconvenience to be overlooked…it was a thing to be honored and even embraced, though always warily, for the sea could always strike back, and with irresistible force and power.
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Simon Winchester
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Where ever the design of their minds collaborate,then there would not be a horoscope to identify their matching souls,
nothing could stop them in their curious push for the aesthetic Love with perceptual clarity, as if a crystalline stream ran forth to beautify their souls.
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Nithin Purple (The Bell Ringing Woman: A Blue Bell of Inspiration)
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Ma minds more than manners for the girls. She models an aesthetic appreciation of beautiful things, including these delicate floral offerings.
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Marta McDowell (The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes that Inspired the Little House Books)
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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) has so often been accused of being fascism’s progenitor that his case requires particular care. Intended for the Lutheran pastorate, the young Nietzsche lost his faith and became a professor of classical philology while still extraordinarily young. For his remaining good years (he suffered permanent mental breakdown at fifty, perhaps related to syphilis) he invested all his brilliance and rage in attacking complacent and conformist bourgeois piety, softness, and moralism in the name of a hard, pure independence of spirit. In a world where God was dead, Christianity weak, and Science false, only a spiritually free “superman” could fight free of convention and live according to his own authentic values. At first Nietzsche inspired mostly rebellious youth and shocked their parents. At the same time, his writing contained plenty of raw material for people who wanted to brood on the decline of modern society, the heroic effort of will needed to reverse it, and the nefarious influence of Jews. Nietzsche himself was scornful of patriotism and the actual anti-Semites he saw around him, and imagined his superman a “free spirit, the enemy of fetters, the non-worshipper, the dweller in
forests.” His white-hot prose exerted a powerful intellectual and aesthetic influence across the political spectrum, from activist nationalists like Mussolini and Maurice Barrès to nonconformists like Stefan George
and André Gide, to both Nazis and anti-Nazis, and to several later generations of French iconoclasts from Sartre to Foucault. “Nietzsche’s texts themselves provide a positive goldmine of varied possibilities.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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