#isi

Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life. Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist; The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage, its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#beauty #body-image #consumer #cosmetic-surgery #cosmetics

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire. ↗

— Tom Robbins

#decatur #dixie-beer #french-quarter #honeysuckle #louisiana

Ah! How contrary are the teachings of Jesus to the feelings of nature! Without the help of His grace it would be impossible not only to put them into practice, but to even understand them. ↗

— St. Therese of Liseiux

#story-of-a-soul #nature

I have no particular love for the idealised 'worker' as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on. ↗

— George Orwell

#communist #police #worker #love

Os outros animais além do mamífero humano não observam no nu um atentado ao pudor nem os curumins crescem traumatizados com cenas diárias de sexo, evisceração e nu. ↗

— Filipe Russo

#hipocrisia #natural #normal #nu #nature

There were mountains; there were valleys; there were streams. She climbed the mountains; roamed the valleys; sat on the banks of streams.....when, from the mountain-top, she beheld, far off, across the Sea of Marmara the plains of Greece, and made out (her eyes were admirable) the Acropolis with a white streak or two which must, she thought, be the Parthenon, her soul expanded with her eyeballs, and she prayed she might share the majesty of the hills, know the serenity of the plains, etc. etc., as all such believers do. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#travel #vision #nature

When merely meeting someone is ridden with angst and open to misinterpretation, is it any wonder she is so hopeless at relationships. ↗

— Sarah Rayner

#misinterpretation #relationships #relationship

Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures. ↗

— Tiffany Madison

#existentialism #god #humanity #knowledge #religion

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#unity #unity

There is a devilishly direct relationship between the significance of an idea and how nervous we become at the prospect of having to think about it. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#decisions #ideas #life #significance #thinking