#negation

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things. ↗

— Salvatore Quasimodo

#being #desire #duplication #earth #even

I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful. ↗

— Norman Hartnell

#despise #i #negation #simplicity

The negation of severe suffering was the nearest approach to happiness I expected to know. Besides, I seemed to hold two lives - the life of thought, and that of reality. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#happiness #negation #suffering #life

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself. ↗

— Jose Ortega y Gasset

#existence #itself #life #negation #than

[A]s though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him, thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed. For I (God [knows]) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere. For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. ↗

— Héloïse d'Argenteuil

#celibacy #convent #dignity #following #grief

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. ↗

— Gustave Courbet

#forms #ideal #negation #painting #realism

[In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. ↗

— Antonia Fraser

#empowerment #feminism #gender #history #independence