Statue Of David Quotes

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating, it is irrational. Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do. Your life is a complex and ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions. To put it another way, you are more like a river than a statue. Stop trying to define yourself with negative labels—they

How sad it must be for you to be nothing more than a hollow statue, to have your tomb preserved and your story forgotten.

The Pope asked Michelangelo: ‘Tell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?’ Michelangelo’s answer: ‘It’s simple. I removed everything that is not David.

On the outside, I’m the perfect kid–like a statue of perfect marble, serene and unreal. Inside, it’s all snakes and maggots and broken glass.

No-one ever built a statue of a critic.

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

Michelangelo was asked by the pope about the secret of his genius, particularly how he carved the statue of David, largely considered the masterpiece of all masterpieces. His answer was: “It’s simple. I just remove everything that is not David.

The noblest calling in the world is motherhood. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserve the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will exert influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God.

Someone once asked Michelangelo how he was able to create the amazing statue of David. He replied, “I didn’t create David. He was there all along, in that massive block of marble. I just had to chip away to find him.

A visionary company is like a great work of art. Think of Michelangelo’s scenes from Genesis on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or his statue of David. Think of a great and enduring novel like Huckleberry Finn or Crime and Punishment. Think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Shakespeare’s Henry V. Think of a beautifully designed building, like the masterpieces of Frank Lloyd Wright or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. You can’t point to any one single item that makes the whole thing work; it’s the entire work—all the pieces working together to create an overall effect—that leads to enduring greatness.

Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

I asked if you'd rather me keep my shirt on." "No. Why?" "Should we throw a tarp over the statue of David while we're at it?

Traveling across the United States, it's easy to see why Americans are often thought of as stupid. At the San Diego Zoo, right near the primate habitats, there's a display featuring half a dozen life-size gorillas made out of bronze. Posted nearby is a sign reading CAUTION: GORILLA STATUES MAY BE HOT. Everywhere you turn, the obvious is being stated. CANNON MAY BE LOUD. MOVING SIDEWALK ABOUT TO END. To people who don't run around suing one another, such signs suggest a crippling lack of intelligence. Place bronze statues beneath the southern California sun, and of course they're going to get hot. Cannons are supposed to be loud, that's their claim to fame, and - like it or not - the moving sidewalk is bound to end sooner or later. It's hard trying to explain a country whose motto has become You can't claim I didn't warn you. What can you say about the family who is suing the railroad after their drunk son was killed walking on the tracks? This pretty much sums up my trip to Texas.

This is about as far as I can go without some sarcasm creeping in. But before it does, I must say, with utmost sincerity, that your cookies are good enough to bring some of these wax statues back to life. Thanks for that. I once made corn muffins for a fourth-grade project on Williamsburg and they came out like baseballs. So I'm not sure how to reciprocate... but, believe me, I shall.

Like the statue of David, our Authentic Swing already exists, concealed within the stone, so to speak.” Keeler broke in with excitement. “Then our task as golfers, according to this line of thought…” “…is simply to chip away all that is inauthentic, allowing our Authentic Swing to emerge in its purity.

Search all he parks in all your cities; you'll find no statues of committees.

We sweat for our pretensions. It

And we want car wrecks. We say we don't. But we love them. To look is to love. A thousand people drive past the statue of David. Two hundred look. A thousand people drive past a car wreck. A thousand look.

Down with committees Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting to cover too many things, they achieve nothing. Many commercials and many advertisements look like the minutes of a committee. In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees’ Agencies

I am carved like David, every line of my body perfectly chiseled. Hunger is the blade that has made me smooth. I am a statue, yet I am only air at my center. I go to hug myself and -poof!- my arms go right through me finding nothing to hold on to. My hands meet behind my own back in a stone handshake. This is not what you were expecting. I'm so cold. I'm so sharp. I've been cut, now I'll cut you. Come closer. Yes, come closer to me. I am going to make you see what I see.

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington’s mother that had been stored away for safekeeping.

What you call your personality, you know?—it’s not the actual bones, or teeth, something solid. It’s more like a flame. A flame can be upright, and a flame can flicker in the wind, a flame can be extinguished so there’s no sign of it, like it had never been.

I listen to her and think about it, and I realize I would be an absolute moron to walk away from this, no matter what her terms are. I didn't stay in Mew York and let David go to San Francisco because I like the Statue of Liberty. I did it because I want to climb the ladder as high as I possibly can. I did it because I want my name, the name my father gave me, in big, bold letters one day. This is my chance.

I didn’t stay in New York and let David go to San Francisco because I like the Statue of Liberty. I did it because I want to climb the ladder as high as I possibly can. I did it because I want my name, the name my father gave me, in big, bold letters one day. This is my chance.

When Michelangelo was asked how he created a piece of sculpture, he answered that the statue already existed within the marble. God Himself had created the Pieta, David, Moses. Michelangelo’s job, as he saw it, was to get rid of the excess marble that surrounded God’s creation. So it is with you. The perfect you isn’t something you need to create, because God already created it. The perfect you is the love within you. Your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to remove the fearful thinking that surrounds your perfect self, just as excess marble surrounded Michelangelo’s perfect statue.

Behind the naive vanities, the daydreams, they had very badly wanted to be writers. Had wanted it without knowing at all what it was they wanted, their fervor making up for their ignorance. His older self was cooler, more noncommittal, for he had learned that to publicize your goals means running the risk of falling short of them.

Having spent my life trying to fit the will of others, I was unable to distinguish between what I enjoyed and what I thought I should enjoy.

There is a story told about the sculptor Michelangelo. As he was chiseling the statue David out of a huge marble block, a young boy asked him, “How did you know he was in there?

Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees

Now the room has the contours and atmosphere of all rooms in which people stay awake talking. The fluorescent light is grainy, staring. The clutter on the kitchen table—ketchup bottle, sagging butter dish, tin of Nestlé Quik, the rowdy crudded ashtray—the world is narrowed into these, a little universe that the eyes return to again and again. Now it begins, the sorting and testing of words. Remember that words are not symbols of other words. There are words which, when tinkered with, become honest representatives of the cresting blood, the fine living net of nerves. Define rain. Or even joy. It can be done.

the United Republic of Nations. Founded by Avatar Aang over seventy years earlier, the city served as a beacon of hope. It was a place where benders and non-benders could live together in peace. People with the ability to control one of the four elements were known as benders, and those without this ability were non-benders. Avatar Aang was no longer alive, but a giant statue of him kept watch over the city from a small

thought possible a few months earlier. . . . Today, as Korra raced along the pier on the back of her polar bear–dog, Naga, Aang’s gaze felt troubled. She knew it was impossible. The statue was mere stone, nothing more, but the city Korra was sworn to protect had been so damaged in the recent attack that she couldn’t help imagining Aang’s reaction. She was sure it would mirror her own. Korra pulled Naga to a halt in front of Republic

I had discovered, or rediscoverd, that crying is a pleasure—that it can be a pleasure beyond all reckoning if your head is pressed in your mother’s waist and her hands are on your back, and if she happens to be wearing clean clothes.

Rhys was tempted to point out that the golem’s heavy footfalls more or less announced their presence already. Even attempting to move quietly, it was a constant litany of thoom thoom thoom. The golem seemed in no mood for such a reminder, however … if a walking statue could be said to have a “mood.” Rhys was reminded of the solemn templar statues in the mage commons, and wondered what they might be like if they suddenly got up and started walking around. Somehow he doubted they would be nearly as sassy.

We bless the ice, then we just have to somehow get all hundred or so of those monsters to go lick the statue!” I stared hard into the face of the older man, said, “Okay, there is no possible combination of English words that would form a dumber plan than that.

When apple-picking season ended, I got a job in a packing plant and gravitated toward short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing.

You spend hours wrestling with yourself, trying to keep your vision intact, your intensity undiminished. Sometimes I have to stick my head under the tap to get my wits back. And for what? You know what publishing is like these days. Paper costs going up all the time. Nothing gets printed unless it can be made into a movie. Everything is media. Crooked politicians sell their unwritten memoirs for thousands. I’ve got a great idea for a novel. It’s about a giant shark who’s possessed by a demon while swimming in the Bermuda Triangle. And the demon talks in CB lingo, see? There’ll be recipes in the back.

The Artist’s impressions of a walk in the woods. The Artist’s view on viewing. The Artist on Art. How do you get your ideas for stories, Mr. Valentine? Well, I simply exploit everything I come into contact with. One ended, of course, by losing all spontaneity. You saw people as characters, sunsets as an excuse for similes—

The oldest Egyptian or Hindu philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed.

with zero fillings, revealed by the so-so joke—“Have you heard the news about Schrödinger’s Cat? It died today; wait—it didn’t, did, didn’t, did …”; high-volume discourse on who’s the best Bond; on Gilmour and Waters and Syd; on hyperreality; dollar-pound parity; Sartre, Bart Simpson, Barthes’s myths; “Make mine a double”; George Michael’s stubble; “Like, music expired with the Smiths”; urbane and entitled, for the most part, my peers; their eyes, hopes, and futures all starry; fetal think-tankers, judges, and bankers in statu pupillari; they’re sprung from the loins of the global elite (or they damn well soon will be); power and money, like Pooh Bear and honey, stick fast—I don’t knock it, it’s me; and speaking of loins, “Has anyone told

but every year a wreath is still laid at the memorial statue repeating the same old lies they told us a hundred years ago about bringing peace and prosperity to places like Afghanistan? … Does anyone out there really believe a bunch of guys used to sit around the Tim Hortons in Kandahar saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Canada. Can we have two double-doubles to go with democracy?” …

started feeling real sorry for everybody, even though they were screaming and acting silly. I thought about how much work it was to have fun, and how brave we all were for going to the trouble, since the easiest thing would be to just moan and cry and bite the walls, because we’re all going to die anyway, sooner or later. Isn’t that sad? I saw how every human life is a story, and the story always ends badly.

The most effective way of refining you work is to keep it short and simple. "I didn't do anything," explained Michelangelo when asked how he created David. "The statue already existed in the block of stone. All I did was remove everything unnecessary." Rumi advises us not to talk too much, to use the fewest words possible. Consider this idea when telling your stories,when making films, when selecting images, when living life.

And with the image of Jesus carrying the cross, I hearken back to the statue of Atlas on Fifth Avenue, where there is a poignant contrast. Across the street from Atlas stands the majestic Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. There, facing one another, these monuments pay tribute to the world views of my fathers: Christianity and Objectivism; Faith and Reason. Each is resolute in its position and stands in strength. Yet, they could not be more disparate. Where Atlas carries the world, Jesus carries the cross.

Uh, you guys are totally ignoring the much more important question,” Keefe interrupted. He pointed across the courtyard to a weathered marble statue. “Am I the only one who’s noticed that dude is naked?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s the David.” “I don’t care what his name is,” Keefe said. “I still don’t want to see his stuff.” “I’m with Keefe on this one,” Dex jumped in. “Me too,” Biana agreed, blushing bright pink. “Yeah, why isn’t he wearing clothes?” Fitz asked, looking anywhere but at the statue. “Because it’s art!” Sophie said.

In 2004, the Animals in War monument outside Hyde Park in London was created by the English sculptor David Backhouse. The monument includes two life-sized bronze mules carrying supplies, as well as statues of a horse and a dog and bas-relief carvings of other animals such as camels, elephants and birds who have been used in warfare. The inscription reads: *Animals in War. This monument is dedicated to all the animals that served and died alongside British and allied forces in wars and campaigns throughout time. They had no choice.* ~ John Sorenson

To know the narrative in advance is to turn yourself into a machine,” the Manager continues. “What makes humans human is precisely that they do not know the future. That is why they do the fateful and amusing things they do: who can say how anything will turn out? Therein lies the only hope for redemption, discovery, and—let’s be frank—fun, fun, fun! There might be things people will get away with. And not just motel towels. There might be great illicit loves, enduring joy, faith-shaking accidents with farm machinery. But you have to not know in order to see what stories your life’s efforts bring you. The mystery is all.

I listen to her and think about it, and I realize I would be an absolute moron to walk away from this, no matter what her terms are. I didn’t stay in New York and let David go to San Francisco because I like the Statue of Liberty. I did it because I want to climb the ladder as high as I possibly can. I did it because I want my name, the name my father gave me, in big, bold letters one day. This is my chance. “OK,” I say. “OK, then. Glad to hear it.” Evelyn’s shoulders relax, she picks up her water again, and she smiles. “Monique, I think I like you,” she says. I breathe deeply, only now realizing how shallow my breathing has been. “Thank you, Evelyn. That means a lot.

The last time we saw each other, we talked about that statue over there,” she said. “He wanted to know why I was so fascinated by it. I told him that I had never seen it as a monument to a heroic deed, but rather as a representation of a terrible assault. He understood immediately, and asked, ‘What about the fire the dragon is breathing?’ I said it was the same fire that burns inside everyone who is being trampled on. The same fire that can turn us into ashes and waste, but which sometimes—if some old fool like Holger spots us, plays chess with us and talks to us, and just takes an interest—can become something totally different: a force which allows us to strike back.

The point here for the best kids is to inculcate their sense that it’s never about being seen. It’s never. If they can get that inculcated, the Show won’t fuck them up, Schtitt thinks. If they can forget everything but the game when all of you out there outside the fence see only them and want only them and the game’s incidental to you, for you it’s about entertainment and personality, it’s about the statue, but if they can get inculcated right they’ll never be slaves to the statue, they’ll never blow their brains out after winning an event when they win, or dive out a third-story window when they start to stop getting poked at or profiled, when their blossom starts to fade. Whether or not you mean to, babe, you chew them up, it’s what you do.

To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. how could I have ever looked him in the face?...we must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.

Mobutu and Reagan and Mitterand were flying around the world in the Concorde,” began the best joke from the Mobutu era. “Reagan stuck his hand out the window and said: ‘I think we’re flying over America.’ ‘How can you tell?’ the other two heads of state asked. ‘I just felt the Statue of Liberty,’ said Reagan. Then Mitterand stuck his hand out the window. ‘I believe we are now flying over France,’ he said right away. ‘How can you tell?’ Mobutu and Reagan asked him. ‘I just felt the Eiffel Tower.’ Finally Mobutu stuck his hand out the window. ‘I know for sure that we’re flying over Zaïre,’ he told his fellow passengers. ‘But how can you be so sure?’ they protested. ‘Zaïre doesn’t have any towers, does it?’ ‘No,’ Mobutu said, ‘but somebody just stole my watch.

The road climbed higher into the mountains of Nikko National Park, the terraced farm fields giving way grudgingly to forests of tiny trees that seemed to be trimmed, the growth around them carefully cultivated. From a narrow defile the car was passed through a massive wooden gate that swung on a huge arch ornately carved with the figures of fierce dragons. From there a perfectly maintained road of crushed white gravel led up the valley to a broad forested ledge through which a narrow stream bubbled and plunged over the sheer edge. The view from the top was breathtaking. Perched on the far edge was a traditionally styled Japanese house, low to the ground and rambling in every direction. Tiled roofs, rice-paper screens and walls, carved beams, courtyards, broad verandas, gardens, ponds, and ancient statues and figures gave the spot an unreal air, as if it were a setting in a fairy tale

La dernière fois qu'on s'est vus, on a parlé de la statue, là-bas, reprit-elle. Il se demandait pourquoi elle me fascinait tant. Je lui ai expliqué que je ne l'avais jamais considérée comme la représentation d'un acte héroïque, mais comme celle d'une terrible agression infligée au dragon. Holger a compris. Et il m'a interrogée sur le feu. Qu'a-t-il de si particulier, ce feu que crache le dragon ? C'est le feu, lui ai-je répondu, qui brûle dans les veines de tous les opprimés. Ce même feu qui peut nous réduire en cendres peut aussi parfois... si un doux dingue du genre de Holger vous regarde, joue aux échecs avec vous, vous parle, bref, s'intéresse à vous tout simplement, le même feu, donc, qui peut aussi se transformer en une force. Une force qui vous permet de rendre coup pour coup. Holger savait qu'on peut toujours se relever, même quand une lance vous transêrce le corps. C'est pour ça qu'il était si pénible, si fatigant, conclut-elle.

So, about that one sentence of advice: Don’t feel behind. Two Roman historians recorded that when Julius Caesar was a young man he saw a statue of Alexander the Great in Spain and broke down in tears. “Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable,” he supposedly said. Pretty soon, that concern was a distant memory and Caesar was in charge of the Roman Republic—which he turned into a dictatorship before he was murdered by his own pals. It’s fair to say that like most youth athletes with highlight reels, he peaked early. Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you. Everyone progresses at a different rate, so don’t let anyone else make you feel behind. You probably don’t even know where exactly you’re going, so feeling behind doesn’t help. Instead, as Herminia Ibarra suggested for the proactive pursuit of match quality, start planning experiments. Your personal version of Friday night or Saturday morning experiments, perhaps.

The most important individuals on earth have went underground, either for political, social or personal reasons. Ostracized by a society that ignores their most basic rights, they work alone to save the world. Invisible to the five senses, they work from the most unbelievable places, places where they're hardly found, or when found never recognized. I change country at an average of three to six times a year, and travel to places as unpredictable as Lithuania, Julian Assange is in the Equator's Embassy in England, David Icke lives in a tiny apartment in a Island that few have heard about, and then there are many others that you've never seen or met. Without us, there would be no meaning for hope. We may one day be found and recognized, maybe even get statues and other works of art in our name and that will likely happen after we're gone. So we can't say we're doing it for the money or recognition. We're risking our lives for those that show no appreciation or support, for those that rather spend 10 dollars in a meal than two in a book, for those that to a great extent have ridicule us for a longer time than the one in which they've shown respect.

The term "stood" descriptively represents their obstinacy, and stiff-neckedness, wherein they harden themselves and make their excuses in words of malice, having become incorrigible in their ungodliness. For "to stand," in the figurative manner of Scripture expression, signifies to be firm and fixed: as in Romans 14:4, "To his own master he standeth or falleth: yea, he shall be holden up, for God is able to make him stand." Hence the word "column" is by the Hebrew derived from their verb "to stand," as is the word statue among the Latins. For this is the very self-excuse and self-hardening of the ungodly—their appearing to themselves to live rightly, and to shine in the eternal show of works above all others. With respect to the term "seat," to sit in the seat, is to teach, to act the instructor and teacher; as in Matthew 23:2, "The scribes sit in Moses' chair." They sit in the seat of pestilence, who fill the church with the opinions of philosophers, with the traditions of men, and with the counsels of their own brain, and oppress miserable consciences, setting aside, all the while, the word of God, by which alone the soul is fed, lives, and is preserved. Martin Luther, 1536-1546.

Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.

a brief history of art Cave paintings. Clay then bronze statues. Then for about 1,400 years, people painted nothing except bold but rudimentary pictures of either the Virgin Mary and Child or the Crucifixion. Some bright spark realised that things in the distance looked smaller and the pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion improved hugely. Suddenly everyone was good at hands and facial expression and now the statues were in marble. Fat cherubs started appearing, while elsewhere there was a craze for domestic interiors and women standing by windows doing needlework. Dead pheasants and bunches of grapes and lots of detail. Cherubs disappeared and instead there were fanciful, idealised landscapes, then portraits of aristocrats on horseback, then huge canvasses of battles and shipwrecks. Then it was back to women lying on sofas or getting out of the bath, murkier this time, less detailed then a great many wine bottles and apples, then ballet dancers. Paintings developed a certain splodginess - critical term - so that they barely resembled what they were meant to be. Someone signed a urinal, and it all went mad. Neat squares of primary colour were followed by great blocks of emulsion, then soup cans, then someone picked up a video camera, someone else poured concrete, and the whole thing became hopelessly fractured into a kind of confusing, anything-goes free for all.

Mithras is a Persian light and warrior god adopted by the Roman army as their tutelary deity.  His name means “Friend”.  Mithras was the emissary of Ahura Mazda, the supreme power of good, who battled Ahriman, the supreme evil.  Mithras slew the divine bull to release its life-giving blood into the earth, and creatures that served Ahriman like scorpions and serpents tried to stop this happening. Mithras was often depicted with a pointed cap, and a number of reliefs show him in the act of slaying the bull.  As a solar god he was directly equated to Sol Invictus by the Romans, as can be seen from inscriptions.[469]  Twelve inscriptions to him have been found to date.[470] There were seven grades in the Mithraic mysteries, which were only open to free men.  The Mithraic cult was highly tolerant of other deities, as is evidences by depictions of other gods in the shrines.  Also as the soldier god, priesthoods were known to bring their statues to the Mithraea (temples) for protection when danger threatened. The Mithraea were usually small, and have preserved their mysteries to an extent as little writing remains from them.  A relief from Housesteads (Northumberland) shows Mithras bearing a sword and spear rising from an egg, surrounded by a hoop depicting the signs of the zodiac.  A silver amulet found at St Albans similarly depicts Mithras rising from a pile of stones.  More commonly images on altars showed him sacrificing a bull, such as at Rudchester (Northumberland), Carrawburgh (Northumberland) and the London Mithraeum.  There are now five known Mithraea in Britain, those at Caernarvon, Carrawburgh, Housesteads, London and Rudchester.  Of these all were purely military apart from the London Mithraea. 

That's Branton, Michigan, by the way. Don't try to find it on a map - you'd need a microscope. It's one of a dozen dinky towns north of Lansing, one of the few that doesn't sound like it was named by a French explorer. Branton, Michigan. Population: Not a Lot and Yet Still Too Many I Don't Particularly Care For. We have a shopping mall with a JCPenny and an Asian fusion place that everyone says they are dying to try even though it’s been there for three years now. Most of our other restaurants are attached to gas stations, the kind that serve rubbery purple hot dogs and sodas in buckets. There’s a statue of Francis B. Stockbridge in the center of town. He’s a Michigan state senator from prehistoric times with a beard that belongs on Rapunzel’s twin brother. He wasn’t born in Branton, of course – nobody important was ever born in Branton – but we needed a statue for the front of the courthouse and the name Stockbridge looks good on a copper plate. It’s all for show. Branton’s the kind of place that tries to pretend it’s better than it really is. It’s really the kind of place with more bars than bookstores and more churches than either, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s a place where teenagers still sometimes take baseball bats to mailboxes and wearing the wrong brand of shoes gets you at least a dirty look. It snows a lot in Branton. Like avalanches dumped from the sky. Like heaps to hills to mountains, the plows carving their paths through our neighborhood, creating alpine ranges nearly tall enough to ski down. Some of the snow mounds are so big you can build houses inside them, complete with entryways and coat closets. Restrooms are down the hall on your right. Just look for the steaming yellow hole. There’s nothing like that first Branton snow, though. Soft as a cat scruff and bleach white, so bright you can almost see your reflection in it. Then the plows come and churn up the earth underneath. The dirt and the boot tracks and the car exhaust mix together to make it all ash gray, almost black, and it sickens your stomach just to look at it. It happens everywhere, not just Branton, but here it’s something you can count on.

David Ogilvy, who once said, “Search the parks in all the cities, you’ll find no statues of committees.

A wooden statue of the goddess, a palladium (virgin statue), was carried seven times around her temple. The palladium, the statue of the goddess, held a lit torch symbolizing the secret wisdom of her mysteries.[571]

A Nazarene, born of a virgin, in the town of Bethlehem, from the tribe of Judah, a Son of David. It did not matter what these chortling fools thought, the odds on fulfilling those prophecies alone were only possible for one man: Messiah. Artabanus was right about the prophet Daniel’s influence. The story of King Nebuchadnezzar II and his dream of a mighty statue of kingdoms to come was fresh on the minds of all Jews in the region. The dream image had foretold the kingdoms of Greece, Media-Persia, and now, Rome. But what was of more interest to Eleazar was the stone that was cut from the mountain of God without human hands. It hit the last kingdom of the statue and broke them all to pieces.   And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.

the Ammonites, but had never seen them because they lived across the river in the Transjordan. They looked like shades of Sheol to him. Pale-skinned people with dark eye paint and masses of matted hair. They wore bones and teeth as jewelry and their clothing fell across their gaunt bodies in rags. They were a death cult. They were known for their sacrifice of children to their underworld god, Molech. Ittai had heard Molech described as the “abomination of the Ammonites.” Now he understood what that meant. He approached the high place and tophet where they had set up their siege camp. A tophet was the location of their burning of sacrifices. A large statue of Molech made of bronze sat with his arms outstretched. Beneath those arms was the tophet of fire.

In this moment of clarity, Saul regretted that he had opened the gates of Tartarus to satisfy his hunger. There was an emptiness in his soul, a deep and abiding emptiness, like a pit in Sheol, that drove him. He had believed that greatness and glory might satiate the hunger. But now he realized he had bitten off more than he could eat. He felt nauseous. Nevertheless, he determined to institute a pogrom to root out all mediums, necromancers and sorcerers from Israel’s territories. The Torah already prescribed death as the penalty for such spiritual traitors, but in reality was rarely enforced. Common Israelites in more rural areas, in the absence of contact with king or priest, degenerated into doing exactly what Saul himself had previously done. They sought for validation wherever they could find it. And there was plenty of validation from the gods of Canaan, who only asked for a small amount of recognition in return—a small amount of worship. Thus, many Israelites owned teraphim, little statues of gods or ancestors to whom they could maintain household shrines. Even some of Saul’s family had them.

Among the people, it was believed, as late as the present century, that spirits were imprisoned in statues. The statue of Neptune by Ammanati in the fountain of the Piazza della Signoria is called 'Il Biancone' or 'The Great White Man' by the poor people, who used to say that he was the mighty river god of the Arno tuned into statue because, like Michelangelo, he spurned the love of women. When the full moon shines on him, so the story goes, he comes to life and walks about the Piazza conversing with the other statues. Michelangelo's 'David', before it became a statue, used to be known as 'The Giant'. It was a great block of marble eighteen feet high that had been spoiled by Agostino di Duccio; personified by popular fancy, it lay for forty years in the workshops of the Cathedral, until Michelangelo made the Giant-Killer, that is, into a patriotic image of a small country defeating its larger foes. Giants, it was related, had built the great Etruscan stone wall of Fiesole, and many stories were told in Florence of beautiful maidens being turned into pure white marble statues.

I talked to David yesterday, but since it is a statue, it didn’t talk back. I have to say, it was a better conversationalist than my last date.

In many respects, the skill set of an artist is similar to that of a programmer. Michelangelo was the archetypal renaissance man: a painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Perhaps he would have made an incredible programmer. When asked about how he created one of his most famous works, the statue of David, he said: I looked into the stone and saw him there, and just chipped away everything else. Is that what you do? Do you reduce and remove the complexities of the problem space, chipping them all away until you reach the beautiful code you were aiming for?

God, I choose to believe your Word. I don’t claim to understand it, but I choose to believe it. I choose to believe that Jesus alone has power over death and authority to bring life. And, O God, I pray if this is true, then more than anything else, the people here need to know about Jesus! You know this! And I am realizing this in a way I never have before. So I am pleading like I never have before! Please show your mercy in these mountains! Please show your mercy now, O God! Before another sky burial! Before more people are born, live, and die with all their hope in burning incense to a statue!

Not everyone is sad when the Callers enter the room and shout out the next list of names. On the contrary, some people beg and plead, prostrating themselves at the Callers’ feet. These are generally the folks who have been here a long time, too long, especially those who are remembered for unfair reasons. For example, take the farmer over there, who drowned in a small river two hundred years ago. Now his farm is the site of a small college, and the tour guides each week tell his story. So he’s stuck and he’s miserable. The more his story is told, the more the details drift. He is utterly alienated from his name; it is no longer identical with him but continues to bind. The cheerless woman across the way is praised as a saint, even though the roads in her heart were complicated. The gray-haired man at the vending machine was lionized as a war hero, then demonized as a warlord, and finally canonized as a necessary firebrand between two moments in history. He waits with aching heart for his statues to fall.

I am panicking because I realize I've been desperate to know my dad my whole life. I learned a long time ago that such hope was impossible with an impenetrable statue ruin like him. So I gave up. Moreover, I pretended I didn't care if I never knew him. I pretended I was okay living as a Limbo, belonging nowhere, a son without even the most basic connection to the man who fathered him. But it turns out I care very much. I cared this whole time. And now that there's an end coming, I now know that the eternal mystery of Dad will forever remain precisely that; an eternal mystery.

Thus, generally, as painters, when they are painting from other pictures, constantly look at the model, and do their best to transfer its lineaments to their own work, so too, he who is desirous of rendering himself perfect in all branches of excellency, must keep his eyes turned to the lives of the Saints as though to living and moving statues, and make their virtue his own by imitation.”4

Proclus was known to repeat the metaphor that statues are carved by subtraction.. Michelangelo was asked how he carved the statue of David, his answer as: "It's simple. I just remove everything that is not David.

So, about that one sentence of advice: Don’t feel behind. Two Roman historians recorded that when Julius Caesar was a young man he saw a statue of Alexander the Great in Spain and broke down in tears. “Alexander at my age had conquered so many nations, and I have all this time done nothing that is memorable,” he supposedly said. Pretty soon, that concern was a distant memory and Caesar was in charge of the Roman Republic—which he turned into a dictatorship before he was murdered by his own pals. It’s fair to say that like most youth athletes with highlight reels, he peaked early. Compare yourself to yourself yesterday, not to younger people who aren’t you.

Seeing from a high window the three years old boy caught by sunlight, peeing in the garden, I am suddenly aware why those small statues abound gracing our squares and piazzas! The form is eternal delight, and the source of that long golden arch of urine a blessing of curved tummy and bended knees. Hands clapped on bottom, eyes concentrated somewhere between source and target, amazed, enraptured, and miracle again, the golden line between subject and object made clear, whose author, transcending duality, looks out at a world intimately experiencing his arrival.

Said Mr Jefferson: ‘It wd. have given us time.’ ‘modern dress for your statue… ‘I remember having written you while Congress sat at Annapolis, ‘on water communication between ours and the western country, ‘particularly the information…of the plain between ‘Big Beaver and Cuyahoga, which made me hope that a canal ‘…navigation of Lake Erie and the Ohio. You must have had ‘occasion of getting better information on this subject ‘and if you wd. oblige me ‘by a communication of it. I consider this canal, ‘if practicable, as a very important work. T. J. to General Washington, 1787 …no slaves north of Maryland district… …flower found in Connecticut that vegetates when suspended in air…. …screw more effectual if placed below surface of water. Those details at the opening of canto 31 are all, apart from the Latin lines, from the historical record, mostly from the ‘ten fat volumes’ of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson which Eliot had been given by his father and had passed on to Pound.

A time of speaking, | A time of silence. The resonant phrases are from Ecclesiastes, and they go with the Preacher’s exhortation, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.’ Speak, act, while you have time in this world of vanities, is the Preacher’s message. Jefferson’s saying ‘It wd. have given us time’ rhymes with that, and with both time and speaking, not to the ear but to the understanding. A feeling for the time is there again in ‘“modern dress for your [i.e. Washington’s] statue”’. Speaking and acting in time modulates in the following lines through ‘remember having written you…water communication…information…a canal | navigation…better information…a communication of it…T. J. to General Washington, 1787’. Those lines compose an ‘intellectual complex’ or vortex and generate a general idea of constructive communications at a particular moment in time.

At the end of the day that statue is nothing more than a chunk of granite and copper sitting in front of the library. That statue matters a lot less than the end goal. Holding onto history is not nearly as important as where we are headed. Pride matters less than power.

There was a right many folks in these mountains fought for the Union. So where’s them folks’ statue? Why ain’t their kin dancing around in uniforms playing dress-up and slapping stickers on the backs of their pickup trucks? Why ain’t they hung up on some little four-year window a hundred and fifty fucking years ago? Tell me that.

All statues of the gods had gemstones for eyes, all in different colors, and it was exactly like David said at that party: it felt like they already knew that we were here. They already knew and they would be watching us.

Tell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?

Uh, you guys are totally ignoring the much more important question,” Keefe interrupted. He pointed across the courtyard to a weathered marble statue. “Am I the only one who’s noticed that dude is naked?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s the David.” “I don’t care what his name is,” Keefe said. “I still don’t want to see his stuff.” “I’m with Keefe on this one,” Dex jumped in. “Me too,” Biana agreed, blushing bright pink. “Yeah, why isn’t he wearing clothes?” Fitz asked, looking anywhere but at the statue. “Because it’s art!” Sophie said. “Most of the old painters and sculptors did nudes. They were studying the human body or something, I don’t know—why are we talking about this?

Am I the only one who’s noticed that dude is naked?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s the David.” “I don’t care what his name is,” Keefe said. “I still don’t want to see his stuff.” “I’m with Keefe on this one,” Dex jumped in. “Me too,” Biana agreed, blushing bright pink. “Yeah, why isn’t he wearing clothes?” Fitz asked, looking anywhere but at the statue. “Because it’s art!” Sophie said. “Most of the old painters and sculptors did nudes. They were studying the human body or something, I don’t know—why are we talking about this?

Many believe the process of creativity is one of assembling thoughts and concepts but highly creative people will tell you the song, the image was "in" them and they're task was to get it out, a process of discovery, not design. This said most artfully by Michael Angelo on how he created his most famous statue of David, he said, "It's easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David.

Back rubs,” she says without even pausing to think about it. “Long and luxurious and totally aimless back rubs.” “Hot showers,” he says. “Incredibly hot. Like, use-all-the-hot-water-in-the-whole-building hot.” “The first sip of water when you’re really thirsty.” “The first sip of coffee in the morning.” “The smell of dryer exhaust.” “The smell of hot asphalt at an amusement park.” “Sprinting into the ocean.” “A hayride at sunset.” “Lobster rolls, warm, with melted butter.” “Cheese ravioli out of a can.” “Whoopie pies with marshmallow fluff.” “Tater Tots with mayonnaise.” “The moment everyone at a wedding stands up at the first few notes of the bridal march.” “When you stare at a Rothko so long it looks like it’s vibrating.” “The statue of David.” “American Gothic.” “The beginning of Mozart Forty.” “Rage Against the Machine.” “The violin solo from Scheherazade.

Uh, you guys are totally ignoring the much more important question,” Keefe interrupted. He pointed across the courtyard to a weathered marble statue. “Am I the only one who’s noticed that dude is naked?” Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s the David.” “I don’t care what his name is,” Keefe said. “I still don’t want to see his stuff.

As for the statues being ‘vivid evidence of…artistic skills’, Bronowski was having none of that either. To him they were vivid evidence of failure, not success:

The critical question about these statues is, Why were they all made alike? You see them sitting there, like Diogenes in their barrels, looking at the sky with empty eye-sockets, and watching the sun and the stars go overhead without ever trying to understand them. When the Dutch discovered this island on Easter Sunday in 1722, they said that it had the makings of an earthly paradise. But it did not. An earthly paradise is not made by this empty repetition…These frozen faces, these frozen frames in a film that is running down, mark a civilization which failed to take the first step on the ascent of rational knowledge.

The statues were all made alike because Easter Island was a static society. It never took that first step in the ascent of man – the beginning of infinity.

The Easter Islanders’ culture sustained them in both senses. This is the hallmark of a functioning static society. It provided them with a way of life; but it also inhibited change: it sustained their determination to enact and re-enact the same behaviours for generations. It sustained the values that placed forests – literally – beneath statues. And it sustained the shapes of those statues, and the pointless project of building ever more of them.

ni a rechazar el cambio o acorazar el statu quo.

He was working that charm right now on the trainer who kneeled before him and touched his thigh as though it were the thigh of David, Michelangelo’s glorious statue come to life right here on court.

How to scale and enter the risen path was largely unknown. It all might begin in darkness, but it cast a shadow that, when viewed from the ground, was too bleak. Demolition was once a question not of “whether, but when,” until one photographer spent a year on the trail documenting what was there. 4 The scenes were “hallucinatory”—wildflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, irises, and grasses wafted next to hardwood ailanthus trees that bolted up from the soil on railroad tracks, on which rust had accumulated over the decades. 5 Steel played willing host to an exuberant, spontaneous garden that showed fealty to its unusual roots. Tulips shared the soilbed with a single pine tree outfitted with lights for the winter holidays, planted outside of a building window that opened onto the iron-bottomed greenway with views of the Hudson River and the Statue of Liberty to the left and traffic, buildings, and Tenth Avenue to the right. 6 Wading through waist-high Queen Anne’s lace was like seeing “another world right in the middle of Manhattan.” 7 The scene was a kind of wildering, the German idea of ortsbewüstung, an ongoing sense of nature reclaiming its ground. 8 “You think of hidden things as small. That is how they stay hidden. But this hidden thing was huge. A huge space in New York City that had somehow escaped everybody’s notice,” said Joshua David, who cofounded a nonprofit organization with Robert Hammonds to save the railroad. 9 They called it the High Line. “It was beautiful refuse, which is kind of a scary thing because you find yourself looking forward and looking backwards at the same time,” architect Liz Diller told me in our conversation about the conversion of the tracks into a public space, done in a partnership with her architectural firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and James Corner, Principal of Field Operations, and Dutch planting designer Piet Oudolf. Other architectural plans proposed turning the High Line into a “Street in the Air” with biking, art galleries, and restaurants, but their team “saw that the ruinous state was really alive.” Joel Sternfeld, the “poet-keeper” of the walkway, put the High Line’s resonance best: “It’s more of a path than a park. And more of a Path than a path.” 10

You can readily see the contrast in style between Michelangelo’s statues of David and also of St. Matthew.

His face bore an imperial nose, one belonging to the same pedigree as the one venomously blasted from the face of the Sphinx statue by Greek envy.

David Breashears is probably best known for his high-altitude cinematography—a world-class climber, he took the IMAX images for the classic film Everest. But one of his most important projects consists of still images like these. He took old pictures of the roof of the world—many from the 1921 Mallory expedition to Everest—and painstakingly found the same vantage points so he could recreate the shots eight decades later. Side by side, what the images showed was an almost unbelievable loss of ice—the scale of these mountains is so huge that it takes a moment to realize that, in the pictures of the Ronbuk Glacier, 400 vertical feet of ice (that’s taller than the Statue of Liberty) has disappeared.