#ward

There is more to joy than looking only for affirmation; refusing to be challenged is the only bigotry. ↗

— Criss Jami

#bigotry #challenges #confidence #conflict-resolution #courage

No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it. ↗

— Murasaki Shikibu

#effort #learning #rewards #art

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#autobiography #carol-blue #edward-said #georgetown-washington #heterosexuality

Golf is an awkward set of bodily contortions designed to produce a graceful result. ↗

— Tommy Armour

#bodily #designed #golf #graceful #produce

The enmity of such a party towards Socialism does not mean that the members are only prejudiced against it because they do not know it; it means that they are possessed of bourgeois ideas, and wish to determine their policy accordingly. ↗

— Karl Radek

#against #because #bourgeois #determine #does

What is the greatest reward a writer can have? Isn't it that day when someone rushes up to you, his face bursting with honesty, his eyes afire with admiration and cries, "That new story of yours was fine, really wonderful! ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#writing #art

-[...] comme vous me paraissez amateur; car lorsque je suis entré vous regardiez mes tableaux, je vous demande la permission de vous faire voir ma galerie : tous tableaux anciens, tous tableaux de maîtres garantis comme tels ; je n'aime pas les modernes. -Vous avez raison, monsieur, car ils ont en général un grand défaut : c'est celui de n'avoir pas encore eu le temps de devenir des anciens. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#art #cowardice #humor #repartee #art

For ages past the Genius of Literature and the Genius of Art have walked together hand in hand. For the Goddess of letters is blind, and only she of Art can lend her sight. ↗

— Howard Pyle

#howard-pyle #age

Boredom is for the selfish. ↗

— Patti Digh

#boredom-and-attitude #keep-learning #moving-forward #selfishness #attitude

Your time is way too valuable to be wasting on people that can't accept who you are. ↗

— Turcois Ominek

#believe-in-yourself #inspiration #inspirational #inspirational-quotes #letting-go