To keep a house in which every object, down to the smallest bibelot, is in perfect taste, is in shocking taste. No house can be truly tasteful unless it contains at least half a dozen atrocities of varying sizes and uses. This must not include the residents, however.
—Judith Martin
—found in Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior: Freshly Updated (2005)
WORK
Concise, compelling works and excerpts from antiquity until today. A commonplace book of sorts.
Music and Poetry (Honoré de Balzac)
Believe me, in painting his Saint-Cecilia, Raphael gave the preference to music over poetry. And he was right; music appeals to the heart, whereas writing is addressed to the intellect; it communicates ideas directly, like a perfume.
—Honoré de Balzac (translated by Clara Bell & James Waring)
—from “Massimilla Doni” (1837)
from The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli)
…you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man. This role was taught covertly to princes by ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised, so that he would look after them with his discipline. To have as teacher a half-beast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both natures; and the one without the other is not lasting.
Thus, since a prince is compelled of necessity to know well how to use the beast, he should pick the fox and the lion, because the lion does not defend itself from snares and the fox does not defend itself from wolves. So one needs to be a fox to recognize snares and a lion to frighten the wolves.
—Niccolò Machiavelli (translated by Harvey C. Mansfield)
—found in The Prince (1513-1515; this translation 1985)
from Diminuendo (Max Beerbohm)
I shall look forth from my window, the laburnum and the mountain-ash becoming mere silhouettes in the foreground of my vision. I shall look forth and, in nay remoteness, appreciate the distant pageant of the world. Humanity will range itself in the columns of my morning paper. No pulse of life will escape me. The strife of politics, the intriguing of courts, the wreck of great vessels, wars, dramas, earthquakes, national griefs or joys; the strange sequels to divorces, even, and the mysterious suicides of land-agents at Ipswich—in all such phenomena I shall steep my exhaurient mind.
—Max Beerbohm
—from “Diminuendo”
—found in The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)
Fernando Pessoa on the Soul
My soul is a secret orchestra, but I don’t know what instruments — strings, harps, cymbals, drums — strum and bang inside me. I only know myself as the symphony.
—Fernando Pessoa (translated by Richard Zenith)
—found in The Book of Disquiet (2001)
Rainer Maria Rilke on Solitude
…you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground. People have tended (with the help of conventions) to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light, and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult. All living things do this, everything in nature grows and defends itself according to its kind and is a distinct creature from out of its own resources, strives to be so at any cost and in the face of all resistance. We know little, but that we must hold fast to what is difficult is a certainty that will never forsake us. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Charlie Louth)
—found in Letters to a Young Poet (written 1902-1908; first published 1929; this translation 2011)
from Catching the Big Fish (David Lynch)
Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.
—David Lynch
—from Catching The Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006)
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