B Stein Quotes

She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.

What is the answer?" [ I [Alice B Toklas] was silent ] In that case, what is the question?

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.

I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.

...they do quote me, that means that my words and my sentences get under their skins although they do no know it.

After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.

I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it never can do.

She says it is a good thing to have no sense of how it is done in the things that amuse you. You should have one absorbing occupation and as for the other things in life for full enjoyment you should only contemplate results. In this way you are bound to feel more about it than those who know a little of how it is done.

Godiva was tired and old and Gertrude Stein in spring bought a new car...

She answered him, there is nothing within you that fights itself and hitherto you have had the instinct to produce antagonism in others which stimulated you to attack.

She always says that americans can understand spaniards. That they are the only two western nations that can realize abstraction. That in americans it expresses itself b disembodiedness, in literature and machinery, in Spain by ritual so abstract that it does not connect itself with anything but ritual.

J'aime vivre au milieu de tant de gens et être si seule avec ma langue et moi-même.

یکبار از وُلار درباره‌ی تابلوی یکی از نقاشان پرسیدند، گفت فلانی سزانِ مجموعه‌دارهای فقیر هست. خب، والوتون هم مانه‌ی مجموعه‌دارانِ فقیر است.

The important thing, she insists, is that you must have deep down as the deepest thing in you a sense of equality. Then anybody will do anything for you.

What is the answer?” Gertrude Stein asked Alice B. Toklas as Stein was dying. There was no reply. “In that case, what is the question?” Stein asked.

THE LESBIAN AVENGERS Their motto playfully proclaimed “we recruit,” and recruit this group did. Formed in the 1990s to bring attention to lesbian causes, the Lesbian Avengers spent Valentine’s Day handing out chocolate kisses in Grand Central Station that read, “You’ve just been kissed by a lesbian.” In Bryant Park, they unveiled a papier-mâché sculpture of Alice B. Toklas embracing her lover, Gertrude Stein. The Avengers also ate fire, which would become their dramatic trademark—first practiced as an homage to an Oregon gay man and lesbian woman who were burned to death after a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the apartment they shared.

همان‌طور که پابلو (پیکاسو) یکبار گفت، وقتی چیزی را خلق می‌کنی، خلق کردن آن به‌حدی پیچیده است که حکماً زشت خواهد شد، اما آن‌هایی که از تو تقلید می‌کنند مجبور نیستند نگرانِ خلق کردن آن باشند و می‌توانند آن را خوشگل بسازند، و بنابراین وقتی دیگران از کاری تقلید می‌کنند همه خوششان می‌آید.

One of the things that I have liked all these years is to be surrounded by people who know no english. It has left me more intensely alone with my eyes and my english. I do not know if it would have been possible to have english be so all in all to me otherwise. And they none of them could read a word I wrote, most of them did not even know that I did write. No, I like living with so very many people and being all alone with english and myself.

You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.

She always had a way of seeing through the surface of things, understanding people as they really were, not as they pretended to be.

It was then that I said, and realized, that it is not what France gave you but what it did not take away from you that was important.

There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.

ولار هرگز کنجکاوی بیهوده نداشت، همیشه می‌خواست بداند همه راجع به همه چیز چه فکر می‌کنند زیرا از این راه می‌فهمید خودش چه فکر می‌کند.

گرترود به شدت معتقد است انسان فقط می‌تواند یک «مِتی‌یه» («کارِ جدی») داشته باشد همان‌طور که انسان فقط می‌تواند یک زبان داشته باشد. کار او نوشتن است و زبان او انگلیسی است.

گرترود همیشه می‌گوید که از چیزهای غیرعادی بدش می‌آید، خیلی واضح‌اند. می‌گوید که چیزهای عادی به‌طور ساده خیلی پیچیده‌تر و جالب‌ترند.

دوست جوان من، دو نوع هنر وجود دارد، هرگز این را فراموش نکن، هنر داریم و هنر رسمی داریم... همیشه این‌طور بوده و همیشه هم این‌طور خواهد بود.

Katzenjammer

به من گفت که او می‌تواند ببخشد اما هرگز نمی‌تواند فراموش کند. من اضافه کردم ولی من می‌توانم فراموش کنم اما نمی‌توانم ببخشم. مادر گرترود استاین در این مورد ظاهراً هیچکدام را نمی‌توانست انجام دهد.

I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. In short, I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.' Gertrude Stein wrote this in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein being apparently the genius, Alice apparently the wife. 'I am nothing,' Alice said after Gertrude dies, 'but a memory of her.' ...the flashing blues and red made him look ill, then well, then ill again...

The process of creation is a journey of self-discovery, revealing not just what we can do, but who we truly are. Through the act of creating, we explore and uncover aspects of ourselves that may not be apparent in our everyday lives.

شدیداً تحت تاثیر زیبایی فرناند قرار گرفت. درواقع کاملاً مفتون او شد. به گرترود استاین گفت اگر می‌توانستم فرانسه صحبت کنم با او عشق‌بازی می‌کردم و او را از چنگ پیکاسوی کوچولو در می‌آوردم. گرترود استاین با خنده گفت، مگر تو با کلمات عشق‌بازی می‌کنی؟

In the long run, it is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings. Self-reliance and the ability to think critically are the greatest gifts you can give to them.

[Haweis] did however plead for commas. Gertrude Stein said commas were unnecessary, the sense should be intrinsic and not have to be explained by commas and otherwise commas are only a sign that one should pause and take breath but one should know of oneself when one wanted to pause and take breath. However, as she liked Haweis very much and he had given her a delightful painting for a fan, she gave him two commas. It must however be added that on rereading the manuscript she took the commas out.

To be truly creative, you must be free from all constraints, and this freedom comes from being true to yourself. The essence of creativity lies in breaking away from conventions and expressing your innermost thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment.

In the long run, it is not who you know but what you do with what you know that makes a difference. Relationships and connections are important, but it is the application of knowledge and the actions you take that ultimately define your impact and success.

No, she replied, you see I feel with my eyes and it does not make any difference to me what language I hear, I don’t hear a language, I hear tones of voice and rhythms, but with my eyes I see words and sentences and there is for me only one language and that is english.

Life is a very complicated thing. The trouble with life is that it is very complicated. It involves many facets and layers, and it is not something that can be easily understood or neatly categorized. The complexity of life requires a deep engagement and thoughtful reflection.

Sure, she said, as Pablo once remarked, when you make a thing, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly, but those that do it after you they don't have to worry about making it and they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when the others make it.

Art is not about creating something beautiful; it is about expressing something true. The value of art lies not in its aesthetic appeal, but in its ability to convey genuine emotion and insight. It is a reflection of the artist’s truth and their unique way of interpreting the world.

The things that one remembers are important and the things that one forgets are equally important. Memory is selective and subjective, shaping our understanding of the past and influencing our actions in the present. What we choose to hold onto and what we let go of defines who we are.

A work of art is not a thing but a way of looking at things. It is a method of expressing how you see the world. The creation itself is secondary to the vision behind it. What matters is not just the physical manifestation of art, but the perspective and insight that it brings to those who encounter it.

I have so much inertia and so little initiative that very possibly if you had not kept me from taking my degree I would have, well, not taken to the practice of medicine, but at any rate to pathological psychology and you don’t know how little I like pathological psychology, and how all medicine bores me.

Life is not real unless it is lived. To merely exist without engaging fully with the world around you, without embracing both the pain and the pleasure, is to miss the essence of what it means to be alive. Real life is experienced through action, through participation, through being present in each moment.

It was an endless variety. And everybody came and no one made any difference. Gertrude Stein sat peacefully in a chair and those who could did the same, the rest stood. There were the friends who sat around the stove and talked and there were the endless strangers who came and went. My memory of it is very vivid.

You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery. The act of creation is not about achieving a specific outcome but about exploring the unknown, uncovering new truths, and experiencing the joy of finding something unexpected and beautiful.

was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it. My mother’s father was a pioneer, he came to California in ‘49, he married my grandmother who was very fond of music. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann’s father. My mother was a quiet charming woman named Emilie.

بعدها وقتی ماتیز مرد بسیار ثروتمندی شد به خریدن تابلو ادامه داد. می‌گفت که تابلوشناس است و به آن‌ها اعتماد دارد و شناختی از چیزهای دیگر ندارد. بنابراین برای لذت خودش و بعنوان بهترین ارثیه‌ای که می‌توانست برای فرزندانش بگذارد تابلوهای سزان را خرید. پیکاسو هم بعدها وقتی ثروتمند شد تابلو می‌خرید اما فقط کارهای خودش را. او هم نسبت به تابلوها همان عقیده را دارد و دلش می‌خواهد بهترین ارثیه را برای پسرش بگذارد و به همین دلیل هم آثار خودش را باز می‌خرد و جمع می‌کند.

Gertrude Stein has never ceased to be thankful to her mother for neither forgetting or forgiving. Imagine, she has said to me, if my mother had forgiven her sister-in-law and my father had gone into business with my uncle and we had lived and been brought up in New York, imagine, she says, how horrible. We would have been rich instead of reasonably poor but imagine how horrible to have been brought up in New York. I as a californian can very thoroughly sympathise.

Gertrude Stein, in her work, has always been possessed by the intellectual passion for exactitude in the description of inner and outer reality. She has produced a simplification by this concentration, and as a result the destruction of associational emotion in poetry and prose. She knows that beauty, music, decoration, the result of emotion should never be the cause, even events should not be the cause of emotion nor should they be the material of poetry and prose. Nor should emotion itself be the cause of poetry or prose. They should consist of an exact reproduction of either an outer or an inner reality.

The Undermining of Western Civilization Paperback” by Leslie Stein ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0B6L779ZB ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8840081624 … within much of the West and within American in particular, a Marxist presence containing fanatics with an obsessive hatred of all that their country stands for, has captured large numbers of alienated and benighted followers. As a result, a growing number of people, blind to their country’s achievements, seek the replacement of western societies based on free enterprise capitalism and liberal democratic values, by a communist regime of one form or another. It is this tendency that has induced me to write this book, based on the careful sifting of the evidence, which would provide the reader with a concise and reliable account of how, what I term the “radical left,” has arisen and influenced the Mores of present-day Western society.

As used in everyday parlance, self is equivalent to ego. When we say that someone is selfish, we mean that they are egotistical or narcissistic.

But in a Jungian vocabulary, self has the opposite meaning. To say that someone is self-centered is to say that they are precisely not egotistical and narcissistic, but rather philosophical, having a wide perspective, and not personally reactive or easily thrown off balance.

Our experience in life, especially in the first half of life, like with the BTS members in their 20’s, is that we discover the Self in others and through others. We call it projection, but projection can be a kind of dismissive way of talking about finding the soul when you are in relationship to another person, let’s say a beloved. When you are in a relationship with a beloved, you are with your soul. That’s why it becomes so crucially dependent to be with her. She is your soul, or he is your soul. But that doesn’t mean it’s all out there. Inside and outside get mixed up, mixed together.

When the ego is well connected to the self, a person stands in relationship with a transcendent center and is precisely not narcissistically invested in nearsighted goals and short-term gains. In such persons there is an ego-free quality, as though they were consulting a deeper and wider reality than merely the practical, rational, and personal considerations typical of ego consciousness.

The ego rests on the surface of the unconscious and occupies the center of consciousness

Clinical and counseling psychology research literature is overwhelmingly overloaded with junk science (Hagen, 1997). Researchers and/or professors of psychology and psychiatry may have long illustrative careers where they have numerous refereed published studies, may have risen to high ranks, such as full professor, even at prestigious universities, may have served as editors or associate editors of several professional journals, and may have been voted as leaders in several professional organizations, all of which may be predicated on a career of doing nothing but junk science

All of this begs the questions as to why psychologists are wasting so much valuable training time on arcane, unproductive, invalid, unreliable, and inaccurate courses.

We now enter the Twilight Zone of psychology. Hundreds of theories of personality exist, but no one has yet successfully identified, or even defined, what personality is (Hall and Lindzey, 1957). Thus, there exists a myriad of psychological tests that measure something, but no one seems to quite know what it is.

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We have heard the stories: Duke Ellington would say, “I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” 5 Tennessee Williams felt that “apparent failure” motivated him. He said it “sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.” Many have heard that Thomas Edison told his assistant, incredulous at the inventor’s perseverance through jillions of aborted attempts to create an incandescent light bulb, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” 6 “Only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one. Many thanks . . .” read part of the rejection letter that Gertrude Stein received from a publisher in 1912.7 Sorting through dross, artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators have learned to transform askew strivings. The telegraph, the device that underlies the communications revolution, was invented by a painter, Samuel F. B. Morse, who turned the stretcher bars from what he felt was a failed picture into the first telegraph device. The 1930s RKO screen-test response “Can’t sing. Can’t act. Balding. Can dance a little” was in reference to Fred Astaire. We hear more stories from commencement speakers—from J. K. Rowling to Steve Jobs to Oprah Winfrey—who move past bromides to tell the audience of the uncommon means through which they came to live to the heights of their capacity. Yet the anecdotes of advantages gleaned from moments of potential failure are often considered cliché or insights applicable to some, not lived out by all.

individuation as Jung presented it in a multitude of writings is vastly more complex and has essentially to do with casting light into the darkness of psychological life and integrating the various polarities and tensions

From this forceful realization that the numinous element in spirituality can heal, an individual was freed from his addiction to alcohol and a worldwide self-help organization was born. Once the true underlying craving for spirit was effectively addressed and integrated into daily life, the desire for alcoholic ecstasy could be held in check.

The human opus—the work we as individuals and to some degree as communities can do and where we can make a difference—is to become conscious of what is given to us, whether it comes by way of biology, personal or collective history, or the endlessly creative unconscious, and to develop it to the best of our ability. In doing so, we also contribute a dimension to existence that did not exist previously, the dimension of consciousness.

The human opus—the work we as individuals and to some degree as communities can do and where we can make a difference—is to become conscious of what is given to us, whether it comes by way of biology, personal or collective history, or the endlessly creative unconscious, and to develop it to the best of our ability. In doing so, we also contribute a dimension to existence that did not exist previously, the dimension of consciousness. I take my cue from C.G. Jung, who saw this as the human contribution to the universe.

Are not all addictions, one wonders after having seen such a wide variety of them in clinical practice, a search for something so elusive as to be considered somehow “of the spirit”?

In other words, the attainment to numinous experiences, while significant in itself, was not of final import; rather, it provided the essential ingredients (the alchemical prima materia) for further stages of refinement in the individuation opus.

This is a thumbnail sketch of the psychological opus of individuation. It is an operation of sublimation, which transforms the spiritual into the psychological and renders numinous experience practical and useful. The archetypal images exposed in numinous experiences become integrated into psychological functioning and assimilated into the contemporary world.

Numinous experience creates a potentially convincing link to the Infinite, and this often leads to the feeling that character flaws like addictions or behavioral disorders are trivial by comparison with the profound vision of wholeness and unity imparted in the mystical state.

Individuation is an imperative that drives us forward and, if successful, releases us from the trap of endlessly repeating the patterns that have conditioned us.

This transformation from one state (the spiritual) to another (the psychological) is described as sublimation.

PEOPLE DO NOT CREATE their personalities willfully by choosing a specific identity or character any more than they form their physiques by picking out a complexion, a size of foot or hand, or a particular combination of facial features.

An understandable wariness about the grand enthusiasms generated by religion, ideology, or mythopoetic hermeneutics has introduced in some people an uneasy suspicion of Jung’s psychology and classical Jungian perspectives on dream interpretation and the hermeneutical methods of amplification and active imagination

Individuation is not, therefore, tantamount to a mystic journey, which prizes the experience of union with God or the vision of the Mysterium tremendum as the apex. Individuation does not culminate in an act of worship. Nor is it identical with the resolute via negativa of such religious traditions as Zen Buddhism. It has elements of both—experiencing the numinous and cleansing the mirror of consciousness—but it includes these as two movements within a greater opus.

people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, any more than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

The rituals of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis were practiced for some 2000 years, from the fifteenth century B.C.E. to the end of the fourth century C.E. Demeter and Persephone are Goddesses of the agricultural cycle, Goddesses of the death and rebirth of the seed crops, Goddesses whose rites were later spiritualized to symbolize the death and rebirth of the soul. The rites of Demeter and Persephone are said to derive from agricultural rituals for women only known as the Thesmophoria. In classical times the rituals of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis were among the most important in all Greece. We go to Eleusis because we too want to celebrate the mysteries of mother and daughter. For those of us who are reared on myths and stories of fathers and sons, it is healing to know that once the deepest mysteries of the universe were symbolized in a story about the relationship of mother and daughter. The story of Demeter and Persephone resonates with echoes of the powerful but little-celebrated relationship we have had with our mothers and daughters. Our rituals at Eleusis in the summers of 1981 to 1986, are among the first to have been celebrated there in conscious recognition of the Goddesses since the forced closing of the ancient temples about 400 C.E. These rituals have been among the most powerful experiences of my life. It seems as if there is an enormous energy dammed up on the site waiting to be released. Whether that power is the natural energy of the place (all the Greek temple sites are at naturally powerful spots, as Vincent Scully has shown) or the cumulative energy of worshippers, or the power of the Goddess, I do not know. From "Eleusinian Mysteries" featured in The Goddess Celebrates: an Anthology of Women's Rituals, Edited by Diane Stein, published in 1991.

Die Technisierung der schriftkulturellen Produktion hatte Kehrseiten, die zumeist erst gegen Ende des 20. Jh. ins Bewusstsein rückten. Damit sind nicht allein die mentalen Einstellungsveränderungen zur massenhaft vorhandenen Schriftlichkeit gemeint, sondern die materiellen Folgen. Die Papier gewordene Welt ist "papieren" geworden, das heißt: problematisch und vergänglich. das ist ganz wörtlich zu nehmen, denn die Folgen der industriellen Papierherstellung sind Holzverschwendung, Umweltverschmutzung und Selbstzerstörung des Papiers durch Säurefraß. Letzterer ist zu einem gravierenden Problem geworden, weil gerade jene Drucktexte, die massenhaft auf dem neuen, chemisch behandelten Papier gedruckt worden waren (z.B. Zeitungen, Zeitschriften, Popularliteratur, Akten, Alltagstexte usw.) in einem Umfang von bis zu 70% vom Zerfall bedroht sind.

I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it.