The obvious self-satisfaction of the individual with his own form stimulates imitation and gradually produces the form of the many...--that is, fashion. Through fashion, the many strive towards and even achieve that very same comforting self-satisfaction with their form.--When you consider how many reasons each person has for anxiety and timid self-concealment, and how three-quarters of his energy and goodwill can be paralyzed and rendered fruitless by these reasons, you have to be very grateful to fashion to the extent that it sets that three-quarters free and communicates self-confidence and a mutual and cheerful cooperation to those who realize that they are all bound by its law. Even foolish laws confer freedom and emotional tranquility so long as enough people submit to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Architecture is a chained and fettered art. Far from being "frozen music," it is an art constantly attempting to realize in solid,... stable form those effects which music is able to conjure up in an instant--effects which succeed each other rapidly during the progress of a musical work. Music can attain the colossal in a way which, in architecture, only the rarest opportunities render even remotely possible. Music can, in a few moments, admit us through vast portals into avenues, courts and halls of infinite extent and variety. Music can suddenly raise up an entire structure and, by the device of modulation, lift it on to a podium, abruptly recess its facades and turn them bodily into the sunshine. Music can etch silhouettes ten times more intricate than those of Dresden or London City, repeat them, increase or reduce them, hurl them into the distance or bring them before us in precise detail. Most of the essentials of architecture--mass, rhythm, texture, outline--are within music's power. Almost, the two arts are the same art, the one able to express nearly everything which the imagination is capable of conceiving, the other bound by the rigours of economy and use.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Perhaps I most fully realized that this was primeval, untamed, and forever untamable, Nature.... It is difficult to conceive of a ...region uninhabited by man. We habitually presume his presence and influence everywhere. And yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have seen her thus vast and drear and inhuman, though in the midst of cities. Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandseled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,--to be the dwelling of man, we say,--so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific,--not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in,--no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there,--the home this, of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites,--to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Paganism can be defined as the elevation of a special space to ultimate value and dignity. Paganism has a god who is bound to one ...place beside and against other places. Therefore, paganism necessarily is polytheistic.... Space means more than a piece of soil. It includes everything which has the character of "beside-each-otherness." Examples of spatial concepts are blood and race, clan, tribe, and family. We know how powerful the gods are who give ultimate dignity and value to a special race and to a special community of blood. In all of them the "beside-each-otherness" is dominating. Human culture is rooted in these realities, and it is not surprising that they always have received adoration, consciously and unconsciously, by those who belong to them, and consequently that they always have claimed universal validity. Modern nationalism is the actual form in which space is ruling over time, in which polytheism is a daily reality. Nobody can deny the tremendous creativity of national community. Nobody would be willing to deprive himself of the physical and psychological space which is his nation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Classical art, in a word, stands for form; romantic art for content. The romantic artist expects people to ask, What has he got to... say? The classical artist expects them to ask, How does he say it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm,... Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where ...you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets--no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I'the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic... Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all, And women too, but innocent and pure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You do me wrong to take me out o' th' grave: Thou art a soul in bliss, but I am bound... Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »