#m

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207) ↗

— Alain de Botton

#engineering #literature #simplicity #words #writing

I see her body as an arousing work of architecture. A sky-scraping building that I wouldn’t mind laying over a mountain to inject my whale-sized shank through its front entrance, knocking the doorman out of the way and flooding the lobby once I am finished with her. ↗

— Carlton Mellick III

#satan-burger #architecture

The kitchen is the real office of the house. The most important business is carried out across the counter, with none of the anarchy of cubicle architecture. ↗

— Bauvard

#humor #kitchens #offices #architecture

My beauty doesn’t lie between my thighs. ↗

— Tracy Ames

#doesn-t #lie #my #my-beauty #thighs

I've reduced a lot of the stress in my life. I've gotten rid of a lot of things. The light was turned on and a lot of the cockroaches started spinning. I swept them out the door. And sometimes you just have to throw things out because they carry a certain energy. ↗

— Wesley Snipes

#carry #certain #cockroaches #door #energy

There is no greater motor for architecture than religious fervor. Ancient examples include the Inca, Aztec Egyptian civilizations. In more recent times, Christianity gave rise to the Gothic and Romanesque architecture of the European middle ages and Islam produced the wonders of the Ottoman Empire. ↗

— Helen Grant Ross

#age

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself. ↗

— Daisaku Ikeda

#destiny #happiness #humanism #inspirational #karma

How should we be able to forget those myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#myth #beauty

I believe that the idea of the totality, the finality of the master-plan, is misguided. One should advocate a gradual transformation of public space, a metamorphic process, without relying on a hypothetical time in the future when everything will be perfect. The mistake of planners and architects is to believe that fifty years from now Alexanderplatz will be perfected. -p.197 ↗

— Daniel Libeskind

#architecture #methodology #modernity #urban-planning #architecture

I never let prejudice stop me from what I wanted to do in this life. ↗

— Sarah Louise Delany

#life #me #never #prejudice #stop