Elegance Is An Attitude Quotes

Elegance is an attitude

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony.

Maybe she will be broken forever. but if it is so, she will adorn it with radiant elegance; and all that man will ever discern is her effortless grace and the softness of her smile.

No one is a greater schoolgirl in spirit than a cynic. Cynics cannot relinquish the rubbish they were taught as children: they hold tight to the belief that the world has meaning and, when things go wrong for them, they consequently adopt the inverse attitude. "Life's a whore, I don't believe in anything anymore and I'll wallow in that idea until it makes me sick" is the very credo of the innocent who hasn't been able to get his way.

The noble buoyancy of her attitude, its suggestion of soaring grace, revealed the touch of poetry in her beauty that Selden always felt in her presence, yet lost the sense of when he was not with her. Its expression was now so vivid that for the first time he seemed to see before him the real Lily Bart, divested of all the trivialities of her little world, and catching for a moment a note of that eternal harmony of which her beauty was a part.

Elegance is a personality.

The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another--this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man--while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!--how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words--'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself.

Her reason for agreeing to sit down with a stranger was that she’d fallen under his charm. She’d immediately liked his mixture of awkwardness and obviousness, an attitude floundering between Pierre Richard and Marlon Brando. Physically, he had something she appreciated in men: he was a little cross-eyed. Just a little, but still enough to notice. Yes, finding this detail about him was incredible. What’s more, he was called François. She’d always liked that name. Elegant and calm—like her idea of the fifties.

[N]obody is a greater schoolgirl in spirit than a cynic. Cynics can not relinquish the rubbish they were taught as children: they hold tight to the belief that the word [sic] has meaning and, when things go wrong for them, they consequently adopt the inverse attitude.

A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think about the heavens, but not to waste their time observing them. Aristotle believed that: “The lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.… The slave shares in his master’s life; the artisan is less closely connected with him, and only attains excellence in proportion as he becomes a slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.” Plutarch wrote: “It does not of necessity follow that, if the work delight you with its grace, the one who wrought it is worthy of esteem.” Xenophon’s opinion was: “What are called the mechanical arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.” As a result of such attitudes, the brilliant and promising Ionian experimental method was largely abandoned for two thousand years. Without experiment, there is no way to choose among contending hypotheses, no way for science to advance. The anti-empirical taint of the Pythagoreans survives to this day. But why? Where did this distaste for experiment come from? An explanation for the decline of ancient science has been put forward by the historian of science, Benjamin Farrington: The mercantile tradition, which led to Ionian science, also led to a slave economy. The owning of slaves was the road to wealth and power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato and Aristotle had a vast slave population. All the brave Athenian talk about democracy applied only to a privileged few. What slaves characteristically perform is manual labor. But scientific experimentation is manual labor, from which the slaveholders are preferentially distanced; while it is only the slaveholders—politely called “gentle-men” in some societies—who have the leisure to do science. Accordingly, almost no one did science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the availability of slaves undermined the economic motive for the development of technology. Thus the mercantile tradition contributed to the great Ionian awakening around 600 B.C., and, through slavery, may have been the cause of its decline some two centuries later. There are great ironies here.

I am not a man of my time. In fact I find it hard not to declare myself its enemy. Not, as I often remark, that I fail to understand it. My comment is merely a pious one. Because I am easy-going I prefer not to be aggressive or hostile and therefore I say that I do not understand those matters which I ought to say I hate or despise. I have sharp ears but I pretend to be hard of hearing, finding as I do that is more elegant to feign this handicap than to admit that I have heard some vulgar sound

The proper attitude toward human activity and climate is expressed in the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Consider the following passage, where industrialist-philosopher Francisco d’Anconia remarks to steel magnate Hank Rearden how dangerous the climate is, absent massive industrial development. The conversation takes place indoors at an elegant party during a severe storm (in the era before all severe storms were blamed on fossil fuels). There was only a faint tinge of red left on the edge of the earth, just enough to outline the scraps of clouds ripped by the tortured battle of the storm in the sky. Dim shapes kept sweeping through space and vanishing, shapes which were branches, but looked as if they were the fury of the wind made visible. “It’s a terrible night for any animal caught unprotected on that plain,” said Francisco d’Anconia. “This is when one should appreciate the meaning of being a man.” Rearden did not answer for a moment; then he said, as if in answer to himself, a tone of wonder in his voice, “Funny . . .” “What?” “You told me what I was thinking just a while ago . . .” “You were?” “. . . only I didn’t have the words for it.” “Shall I tell you the rest of the words?” “Go ahead.” “You stood here and watched the storm with the greatest pride one can ever feel—because you are able to have summer flowers and half-naked women in your house on a night like this, in demonstration of your victory over that storm. And if it weren’t for you, most of those who are here would be left helpless at the mercy of that wind in the middle of some such plain.

She sat facing the window, and he marvelled a little at the contrast between the elegant sophistication of her appearance and the enchanting simplicity of her spirit. She looked as if she should view life from the weary eminence of a throne, and she viewed it like an eager child. He was sub-consciously aware of the significance of the attitude of the inn-keeper and the waitress towards her. Chitterne, in his twenty-seven years, had entertained all kinds of women from all strata of society, and he was aware, without examining the knowledge, that the inn people accepted her as his natural companion. From all those subtle shades of manner which their kind employ to customers they used the one they would have used to Ursula. Her clothes were fashionable and well cut, of course; but clothes alone would not have produced that tribute. There was an aloofness in her beauty, a stillness, something that was almost scorn.

And as he looked with this intention, he was struck anew with her great beauty. He had never seen her in such dress before and yet now it appeared as if such elegance of attire was so befitting her noble figure and lofty serenity of countenance, that she ought to go always thus apparelled. She was talking to Fanny; about what, he could not hear; but he saw his sister’s restless way of continually arranging some part of her gown, her wandering eyes, now glancing here, now there, but without any purpose in her observation; and he contrasted them uneasily with the large soft eyes that looked forth steadily at one object, as if from out their light beamed some gentle influence of repose: the curving lines of the red lips, just parted in the interest of listening to what her companion said—the head a little bent forwards, so as to make a long sweeping line from the summit, where the light caught on the glossy raven hair, to the smooth ivory tip of the shoulder; the round white arms, and taper hands, laid lightly across each other, but perfectly motionless in their pretty attitude. Mr. Thornton sighed as he took in all this with one of his sudden comprehensive glances. And then he turned his back to the young ladies, and threw himself, with an effort, but with all his heart and soul, into a conversation with Mr. Hale.

I’m going to be discussing some of the common attitudes held by people writing about free will. These come in four basic flavors: The world is deterministic and there’s no free will. In this view, if the former is the case, the latter has to be as well; determinism and free will are not compatible. I am coming from this perspective of “hard incompatibilism.” The world is deterministic and there is free will. These folks are emphatic that the world is made of stuff like atoms, and life, in the elegant words of psychologist Roy Baumeister (currently at the University of Queensland in Australia), “is based on the immutability and relentlessness of the laws of nature.” No magic or fairy dust involved, no substance dualism, the view where brain and mind are separate entities. Instead, this deterministic world is viewed as compatible with free will. This is roughly 90 percent of philosophers and legal scholars, and the book will most often be taking on these “compatibilists.” The world is not deterministic; there’s no free will. This is an oddball view that everything important in the world runs on randomness, a supposed basis of free will. We’ll get to this in chapters 9 and 10. The world is not deterministic; there is free will. These are folks who believe, like I do, that a deterministic world is not compatible with free will—however, no problem, the world isn’t deterministic in their view, opening a door for free-will belief. These “libertarian incompatibilists” are a rarity, and I’ll only occasionally touch on their views.

What is elegance?” she ponders. “It’s never pretending to be someone you’re not. It’s trying to figure out who you are and stay true to who you are and take advantage of that strength. Never speak too loudly, listen—always listen—and stay humble. Don’t ever think it’s all about clothes or appearances. It never is. Dress for the occasion. Have a positive attitude, and take it with you wherever you are and with whomever you are interacting. Pay attention to your posture; it speaks volumes. And always, always be well-mannered.” She adds, “My mother is very elegant, and she made everything look easy.

The author seeks repeatedly to impress others with his erudite and aristocratic attitude and elegant appearance. He has tried, so far, to manipulate and dominate us by means of creative and pleasing language and subtle voice expression. During our assessment so far he has not shown signs of nervousness, guilt or shame. He feigns a co-operative attitude. His attitude is directed towards self-preservation and independence, manipulation and deceptive information. He has so far demonstrated a disturbed self-image, which is characterised by incapacity to differentiate between self and other people and a lack of reality resting.

Never to feel his own feelings sincerely, and to rise his pallid triumph to the point of regarding his own ambitions, longings and desires with indifference; to pass alongside his joys anxieties as if passing by someone who doesn't interest him … The greatest self-mastery is to be indifferent towards ourselves, to see our body and soul as merely the house and grounds where Destiny willed that we spend our life. To treat our own dreams and deepest desires with arrogance, en grand seigneur, politely and carefully ignoring them. To act modestly in our own presence; to realize that we are never truly alone, since we are our own witnesses, and should therefore act before ourselves as before a stranger, with a studied and serene outward manner – indifferent because it's noble, and cold because it's indifferent. In order not to sink in our own estimation, all we have to do is quit having ambitions, passions, desires, hopes, whims or nervous disquiet. The key is to remember that we're always in our presence – we are never so alone that we can feel at ease. With this in mind, we will overcome having passions and ambitions, for this make us vulnerable; we won't have desires or hopes, since desires and hopes are plebeian and inelegant; and we won't have whims or be disquieted, because rash behavior is unpleasant for others to witness, and agitated behaviors is always a vulgarity. The aristocrat is the one who never forgets that he's never alone, that's why etiquette and decorum are the privilege of aristocrats. Let take him out of his gardens and drawing rooms and place him in our soul and in our consciousness of existing. Let's always treat ourselves with etiquette and decorum, with studied and for-other-people gestures. Each of us is an entire community, an entire neighborhood of the great Mystery, and we should at least make sure that the life of our neighborhood is distinctive and elegant, that the feasts of our sensations are genteel and restrained, and that the banquets of our thoughts are decorous and dignified. Since other souls may build poor and filthy neighborhoods around us, we should clearly define where our begins and ends, and from the facades of our feelings to the alcoves of our shyness, everything should be noble and serene, sculpted in sobriety, without ostentation. We should try to find a serene way to realize each sensation. To reduce love to the shadow of a dream of love, a pale and tremulous interval between the crests of two tint, moonlit waves. To turn desire into a useless and innocuous thing, a kind of knowing smile in our soul; to make it into something we never dream of achieving or even expressing. To lull hearted to sleep like a captive snake, and to tell fear to give up all its outer manifestations except for anguish in our eyes, or rather, in our eyes of soul, for only this attitude can be considered aesthetic.

The elegance in me is a statement, never requires validation from others, a character, an attitude, a confidence code on my sleeve”.

you thought it meant a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich? Yes, in queer circles they call that camping ... You can call [it] Low Camp ... High Camp is the whole emotional basis for ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art ... High Camp always has an underlying seriousness. You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it, you're making fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is basically camp about religion. The ballet is camp about love.

Haidt and his colleagues call this idea “moral foundations theory.” [4] Drawing on evolutionary biology, cultural psychology, and several other fields, they show that beliefs about morality stand on five pillars: Care/harm: Children are more vulnerable than the offspring of other animals, so humans devote considerable time and effort to protecting them. As a result, evolution has instilled in us the ethic of care. Those who nurture and defend the vulnerable are kind; those who hurt them are cruel. Fairness/cheating: Our success as a species has always hinged on cooperation, including exchanges that evolutionary scientists call “reciprocal altruism.” That means we value those whom we can trust and disdain those who breach our trust. Loyalty/disloyalty: Our survival depends not only on our individual actions, but also on the cohesiveness of our group. That’s why being true to your team, sect, or nation is respected—and forsaking your tribe is usually reviled. Authority/subversion: Among primates, hierarchies nourish members and protect them from aggressors. Those who undermine the hierarchy can place everyone in the group at risk. When this evolutionary impulse extends to human morality, traits like deference and obedience toward those at the top become virtues.[5] Purity/desecration: Our ancestors had to contend with all manner of pathogens—from Mycobacterium tuberculosis to Mycobacterium leprae—so their descendants developed the capacity to avoid them along with what’s known as a “behavioral immune system” to guard against a broader set of impurities such as violations of chastity. In the moral realm, write one set of scholars, “purity concerns uniquely predict (beyond other foundations and demographics such as political ideology) culture-war attitudes about gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, and pornography.” [6] Moral foundations theory doesn’t say that care is more important than purity or that authority is more important than fairness or that you should follow one set of foundations instead of another. It simply catalogs how humans assess the morality of behavior. The theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. But its descriptive power is considerable. Not only did it reshape my understanding of both human reasoning and modern politics; it also offered an elegant way to interpret our moral regrets.

Former president Jimmy Carter tackled what it means to be old in his elegant book The Virtues of Aging. Carter—who is currently ninety-six, by the way—wrote, “The correct answer is that each of us is old when we think we are—when we accept an attitude of dormancy, dependence on others, a substantial limitation on our physical and mental activity.... This is not tied very closely to how many years we’ve lived.

That Hamilton adhered to a code of gentlemanly honor was confirmed in yet another sideshow of the Benedict Arnold affair: the arrest of Major John André, adjutant general of the British Army and Arnold’s contact, traveling under the nom de guerre John Anderson. As he awaited a hearing to decide his fate, he was confined at a tavern in Tappan, New York. Though seven years younger than André, Hamilton developed a sympathy for the prisoner born of admiration and visited him several times. A letter that Hamilton later wrote to Laurens reveals his nearly worshipful attitude toward the elegant, cultured André, who was conversant with poetry, music, and painting. Hamilton identified with André’s misfortune in a personal manner, as if he saw his own worst nightmare embodied in his fate: To an excellent understanding, well improved by education and travel, [André] united a peculiar elegance of mind and manners and the advantage of a pleasing person. . . . By his merit, he had acquired the unlimited confidence of his general and was making a rapid progress in military rank and reputation. But in the height of his career, flushed with new hopes from the execution of a project the most beneficial to his party that could be devised, he was at once precipitated from the summit of prosperity and saw all the expectations of his ambition blasted and himself ruined.55

The beautiful body features satisfy sexual feelings; conversely, life satisfaction lies within an elegant character and attitude.

In Vienna, Modernism had three main characteristics. The first was the new view of the human mind as being largely irrational by nature. In a radical break with the past, the Viennese modernists challenged the idea that society is based on the rational actions of rational human beings. Rather, they contended, unconscious conflicts are present in everyone in their everyday actions. By bringing these conflicts to the surface, the modernists confronted conventional attitudes and values with new ways of thought and feeling, and they questioned what constitutes reality, what lies below the surface appearances of people, objects, and events. Consequently, at a time when people elsewhere wanted to obtain greater mastery of the external world, of the means of production and the dissemination of knowledge, modernists in Vienna focused inward and tried to understand the irrationality of human nature and how irrational behavior is reflected in the relationship of one person to another. They discovered that beneath their elegant, civilized veneer, people harbor not only unconscious erotic feelings, but also unconscious aggressive impulses that are directed against themselves as well as others. Freud later called these dark impulses the death instinct. The

that none but husbands and wives can with any propriety be partners in the waltz.” There is something in the close approximation of persons, in the attitudes, and in the motion, which ill agrees with the delicacy of woman, should she be placed in such a situation with any other man than the most intimate connection she can have in life.

In fact, Zinn’s radicalism was not a good fit for Spelman College, where he must have stood out like a sore thumb. Spelman was a conservative Christian school that had been founded in 1881 by eleven ex-slaves who met in Friendship Baptist Church, wanting to read the Bible.34 It became Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and then, in 1924, Spelman College. Karen Vanlandingham in her 1985 master’s thesis, “In Pursuit of a Changing Dream: Spelman College Students and the Civil Rights Movement, 1955–1962,” explains that the “religious tradition inherent in Spelman’s founding endured as a part of the school’s educational philosophy.” The 1958–1959 college catalogue asserted, “Spelman College is emphatically Christian. The attitude toward life exemplified by the life and teachings of Jesus is the ideal which governs the institution.”35 College life there included mandatory daily chapel attendance and adherence to a strict curfew and dress code. Howard Zinn, however, felt it was his mission and his right to change the college. In the August 6, 1960, Nation, he observed: “ ‘You can always tell a Spelman girl,’ ” alumni and friends of the college have boasted for years. The ‘Spelman girl’ walked gracefully, talked properly, went to church every Sunday, poured tea elegantly and, in general, had all the attributes of the product of a fine finishing school. If intellect and talent and social consciousness happened to develop also, they were, to an alarming extent, by-products.”36 Zinn set out to transform the “finishing school” into a “school for protest.

If there are people in your life who put you down – kids, siblings, inconsiderate peers, a colleague with a grudge and a snappy attitude to go with it, a boyfriend or husband always forgetting things – talk to them. Let them know you won’t be a doormat any longer. Self-respect begets respect. Mutual respect equals amity. Amity is peace. Peace is happiness. Happiness is the root of true elegance.