#ode

[A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me] I'm not here to be on display. And my body is not for public consumption. I will not be reduced to an object, or a pair of legs to sell shoes. I'm a soul, a mind, a servant of God. My worth is defined by the beauty of my soul, my heart, my moral character. So I won't worship your beauty standards, and I don't submit to your fashion sense. My submission is to something higher. ↗

— Yasmin Mogahed

#society #spirituality #women #beauty

The photographic image... is a message without a code. ↗

— Roland Barthes

#image #message #photographic #without

My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#corruption #court-system #courts #ethical-behaviour #ethics

Mrs Forrester ... sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes. ↗

— Elizabeth Gaskell

#cakes #humor #modesty #pretense #tea-parties

But -- my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything -- and he is -- THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is the use of anything? ... I am absolutely shattered by this Balliol business. Such waste -- why couldn't he have been an actor? ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#characters #identity #lord-peter-wimsey #model #oxford

You can't do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm. ↗

— Bill Buford

#calm #modern #pace #traditional-work #business

You can't outsmart, outhustle, or outmaneuver a weak business model ↗

— Jim Muehlhausen

#business

Just as a fish doesn't know it is wet, so companies often can't see or feel the very opportunities where they are swimming ↗

— Pam Henderson

#growth #ideas #opportunity #trends #business

They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more. ↗

— Malcolm Cowley

#conversation #future-plans #lost-generation #modest #new-york

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before. ↗

— Edith Wharton

#art #been #before #common #doing