#oriental

After two years' absence she finally returned to chilly Europe, a trifle weary, a trifle sad, disgusted by our banal entertainments, our shrunken landscapes, our impoverished lovemaking. Her soul had remained over there, among the gigantic, poisonous flowers. She missed the mystery of old temples and the ardor of a sky blazing with fever, sensuality and death. The better to relive all these magnificent, raging memories, she became a recluse, spending entire days lying about on tiger skins, playing with those pretty Nepalese knives 'which dissipate one's dreams'. ↗

— Octave Mirbeau

#decadent #exoticism #orientalism #death

I always ask myself one question: what is human? What does it mean to be human? Maybe people will consider my new films brutal again. But this violence is just a reflection of what they really are, of what is in each one of us to certain degree. ↗

— Kim Ki-duk

#controversy #horror #human #human-nature #oriental

In Botswana in the Kalahari Desert there's a tented camp called Jack's Camp, which is like old Africa meets Ralph Lauren. The Oriental rugs, the old leather chairs - you feel like you've just jumped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. ↗

— Mark Burnett

#africa #called #camp #chairs #desert

It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions. ↗

— Christopher Dawson

#clear #doctrine #essential #found #gives

Faulkner was almost oriental. I never got into Faulkner. ↗

— Tom T. Hall

#faulkner #got #i #into #never

Shadows sometimes people don't see shadows. The Chinese of course never paint them in pictures, oriental art never deals with shadow. But I noticed these shadows and I knew it meant it was sunny. ↗

— David Hockney

#chinese #course #deals #i #knew

The flower is a jumble of thighs, the sun's harem - the most oriental thing imaginable. ↗

— Malcolm De Chazal

#harem #imaginable #jumble #most #oriental

Modern Orientalism embodies a systematic discipline of accumulation. Far from this being exclusively an intellectual or theoretical feature, it made Orientalism tend fatally towards the systematic accumulation of human beings and territories. To reconstruct a dead or lost Oriental language meant ultimately to reconstruct a dead or neglected Orient; it also meant that reconstructive precision, science, even imagination could prepare the way for what armies, administrators, and bureaucracies would later do on the ground. ↗

— Edward W. Said

#imagination

The one thing that you simply have to remember all the time that you are there, is that Hollywood is an oriental city. As long as you do that you might survive. If you try to equate it with anything else you'll perish. ↗

— Olivia De Havilland

#city #else #equate #hollywood #long

But, the true reason for the success of such new expositions [translated Eastern religious texts] is to be found where they are the most accommodating, least rigid, least severe, most vague, and ready to come to easy terms with the prejudices and weaknesses of the modern world. Let everyone have the courage to look deeply into himself and to see what it is that he really wants. ↗

— Julius Evola

#orientalism #religion #spirituality #tradition #courage