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December 14, 2006

beauty and harmony

where the spirit of man comes into harmony with a harmony external to it, there is beauty.

--carleton noyes

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December 6, 2006

pursuing the beautiful

the better you come to know something you love in itself, the better you understand how it differs from everything else, how it does something that has never been done before. but the better you understand that, the more other things you need to know in order to compare them to what you love and to distinguish it from them. and the better you know those things, the more likely you are to find that some of them, too, are beautiful, which will start you all over again in an ever-widening circle of new communities and new things to say. it is a dangerous game, pursuing the beautiful. you may never be able to stop.

--excerpt from “An Essay on Beauty and Judgment” by: alexander nehamas

Posted by ali at 8:32 PM | TrackBack

December 3, 2006

when you see the truth, what are you to do?

where did i leave off? at the point that i cannot imagine a situation in which life would not be a torment; that we all have been created in order to suffer, and that we all know this and try to invent means of deceiving ourselves. but when you see the truth, what are you to do?

--from anna karenina by leo tolstoy

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