A Leak In The Safe

Try, dear reader, in this magical realm full of marvels, which inspire both supreme joy and deepest horror, where, indeed, the solemn goddess lifts her veil so that we imagine we can see her face – though often a smile shimmers through the solemn expression, and that is the mischief that plays with us in all kinds of confusing magic, just as a mother will often tease her favorite child – yes! try, dear reader, in this realm which the spirit so often opens up for us, at least in our dreams, to recognize the figures you know so well from seeing them go about their daily business, as they say in the ordinary world. You will come to believe that magnificent realm is closer than you used to think.

– E. T. A. Hoffman

Romantic art deals with the particular. The particularization of Bewick about a bird’s wing, of Turner about a waterfall or a hill town, or of Rossetti about Elizabeth Siddal, is the result of a vision that can see in these things something significant beyond ordinary significance: something that for a moment seems to contain the whole world; and when the moment is past, carries over some comment on life or experience beside the comment on appearances.

– John Piper

A portion of Schopenhauer’s system by which its pessimism is considerably mitigated is his theory of the Beautiful and of Fine Art. The characteristic of aesthetic contemplation is, he finds, that intellect throws off the yoke and subsists purely for itself as clear mirror of the world, free from all subjection to practical purposes of the will. In this state of freedom, temporary painlessness is attained.

– Thomas Whittaker

There is no reason why one deaf man talking to another deaf man should ever stop.

– Victor Hugo

I bring the gift to my friends, but the Muses’ garland of sweet words is the common property of all the initiated.

– Meleager

Revolution

Put the groove on the bus

Don’t worry about me

Don’t worry about us

– Prince

Among ascetics he is a libertine and among libertines an ascetic. He emphasizes that aspect of himself which is unexpected and inappropriate, shattering any attempt to achieve a superficial reconciliation of the conflict through mere logical compromise.

– Wendy O’Flaherty

How dare they challenge me with their primitive skills!

– Mike Tyson

You’re a real father to me…and not only to me – to a whole generation of pathetic fuck-ups.

– Philip Roth

Information is in essence a theory about making the possible actual.

– Jeremy Campbell

By convention hot, by convention cold:

In reality atoms and void.

– Democritus

For whatever was is not now, and whatever is will not be, and the foam that looks so sun-bright when the wind is kicking up the breakers lies streaked on the hard sand after the tide is out and looks like scum off the dishwater. But there was something: scum left on the hard sand.

– Robert Penn Warren

must there

always be

these colors

without names

without sounds

– Jimi Hendrix