#negation

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. ↗

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

#existence #itself #life #negation #than

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things. ↗

— Salvatore Quasimodo

#being #desire #duplication #earth #even

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. ↗

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

#celibacy #convent #dignity #following #grief

I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful. ↗

— Norman Hartnell

#despise #i #negation #simplicity

Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#adapt #exert #first #freedom #fruitful

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. ↗

— Gustave Courbet

#forms #ideal #negation #painting #realism

Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals. ↗

— Ivan Illich

#heals #health #human #human health #institution

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#empowerment #feminism #gender #history #independence

But in fact if you look at film as a metaphor, only through the negative can you have the positive print. What I'm trying to get to is the positive value of negation. ↗

— Godfrey Reggio

#film #get #i #in fact #look

Can you tell me where to find Tobias'? I ask. When I imagine his face, affection for him bubbles up inside of me and all I want to do is kiss him. 'Four, I mean. He's so handsome, isn't he? I don't really understand why he likes me so much. I'm not very nice, am I?' -Tris ↗

— Veronica Roth

#amity #candor #dauntless #divergent #eurdite