#grotesque

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [...] There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. ↗

— Sherwood Anderson

#grotesque #truth #truths #beauty

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#because #grotesque #just #just because #man

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are. ↗

— Karl Von Clausewitz

#fog #grotesque #kind #larger #like

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#creativity #fantasy #grotesque #irony #novel

In order to induce the process of decay, water is necessary. I think that, in the case of women, men are the water. ↗

— Natsuo Kirino

#grotesque #women #men

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation. ↗

— Dustin Hoffman

#grotesque #how #i #i wonder #just

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#because #christianity #grotesque #more #mystical

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis, because I think that even though something grotesque or gross has been part of film since way back, what we accept or what we can get away with on the screen is broader now. ↗

— Ivan Reitman

#agree #away #back #because #been

But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous. When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals. ↗

— Michelangelo Buonarroti

#grotesque #imagination #monstrous #art

He pictures amputated human arms flopping like fish down the center of the road; syringes floating on beds of liposuctioned fat; gelatinous human eyeballs wiggling merrily as they roll down the highway; and so on. He could imagine other such grotesque stuff, but chooses not to. ↗

— Dan Chaon

#grotesque #limbs #imagination