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The greater puzzle of universal wisdom and beauty that we have strived to honor through our work includes the profound legacies of world artistic and spiritual traditions, the innate integrity of human communities where people seek to live in social harmony, and that regenerative stream of life sustained upon the earth itself as it spins through the cosmos to the music of the spheres.
We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one else can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory. I can see that picture of what we were at an earlier stage may not be recognisable and cannot, certainly, be pleasing to contemplate in later life. But we must not repudiate it, for it is a proof that we have really lived, that it is in accordance with the laws of life and of the mind that we have, from the common elements of life, of the life of studios, of artistic groups-assuming one is a painter-extracted something that transcends them.
Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God?
The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze Gods and Goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all Gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.
The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.
I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?
You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.
"Our lips met hungrily, and his clever artistic hands wrapped around my hips. A sudden buzz from my regular cell phone startled me from the kissing.
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I'm quite ordinary & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself.
I have complete artistic control and I just do my best album every time and trust it to fate.
First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.
I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects but I think I was a pretty good student.
Film-makers are always going to be interested in making movies that plug into society around them. That's what a vibrant artistically alert community should be doing. After all it would be sad if we only made films about alien robots.
My parents are artists in their world in the world of modern artists you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press.
Poetry is the work of poets not of peoples or communities artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.
The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
You know my movies are important on an economic basis on an artistic basis.
My movies are important on an economic basis on an artistic basis.
I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
The more I think about it the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
It's tangible it's solid it's beautiful. It's artistic from my standpoint and I just love real estate.
Artists working for other artists is all about knowing learning unlearning initiating long-term artistic dialogues making connections creating covens and getting temporary shelter from the storm.
The intercourse between the Mediterranean and the North or between the Atlantic and Central Europe was never purely economic or political it also meant the exchange of knowledge and ideas and the influence of social institutions and artistic and literary forms.
I think music, in my opinion, is not about motivation in the way it's - it's not a running base. It's art. And my whole philosophy of music is different. It's almost like cooking and serving to people, seeing them smile and enjoying the food, really.
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