#cons

Read through the most famous quotes by topic #cons




For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209)


Alain de Botton


#complexity #complicated #construction #design #elegance

In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.


James M. Baldwin


#individual #marks #practical #self-consciousness #social

Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint--this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art.  And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny.


Richelle E. Goodrich


#choices #consequences #decisions #destiny #life

It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.


Robert Hughes


#artists #capitalism #consuemrism #creativity #entertainment

In the Tea Party era, it is the restless conservative Republican who has become passion's plaything, the toy of impetuous romance, an erotomania only intensified by the lusting for an upstart savior.


James Wolcott


#conservative #era #impetuous #intensified #only

Even if you do something that others might consider wrong, you should at least be willing to talk about it and tell your parents what you're doing because you believe it's right.


Steve Wozniak


#because #believe #consider #doing #even

They were very considerate, I must say. Every time I felt I was about to slip out of these fingers and would yell for help, they'd let me down and re-organize things.


Fay Wray


#considerate #down #every #every time #felt

Our nation is being led astray by ungodly judges, mayors and governors, who are given to change, defying the Constitution and substituting their own wicked agendas.


David Wilkerson


#astray #being #change #constitution #defying

I hate to lose the constituency that I've worked with, but I've got 170,000 people to meet in my new district.


Albert Wynn


#district #got #hate #i #lose

For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one's survival.


Mo Yan


#army #boy #constant #country #country boy