#objects

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. ↗

— Walter Pater

#beautiful #beauty #being #certain #correct

Objects in a park suggest static repose rather than any ongoing dialectic. Parks are finished landscapes for finished art . ↗

— Robert Smithson

#art #dialectic #finished #landscapes #objects

The question of the composition of perceptible objects is one which already occupied the mind of the ancient Greeks. ↗

— Johannes Stark

#ancient #ancient greeks #composition #greeks #mind

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#baskets #craftsmanship #gives #imagination #many

Sometimes, when you get something new, you trick yourself into believing it has the power to change absolutely everything about you. ↗

— Siobhan Vivian

#change

Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked. T. nodded. 'Come over here,' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings,' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.' 'What are you going to do? Share them?' 'We aren't thieves,' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them,' he said, 'one by one,' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The grey ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through,' T. said. 'You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked. 'Of course I don't hate him,' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love,' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There's only things, Blackie,' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said. ("The Destructors") ↗

— Graham Greene

#love #materialism #money #objects #things

Nothing is inanimate; what is the rest is our interpretation. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #inanimate #inanimate-objects #interpretation #literature

Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed, the way that a striated stone tumbled in a river feels irreducible, the way that this netsuke of a fox has become little more than a memory of a nose and a tail. But it also seems additive, in the way that a piece of oak furniture gains over years and years of polishing, and the way the leaves of my medlar shine. ↗

— Edmund de Waal

#patina #stories #things #art

I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects for anything. ↗

— Peter Benchley

#believe #blaming #i #inanimate #objects

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves. ↗

— Denis Diderot

#endowed #feeling #frequently #instruments #many