#phil

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colors. In France, meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur -- the people are too much a race of gadabouts to maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The Chinese and most of the Eastern races have a warm but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain, they are all curtains -- a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are preposterous. ↗

— Edgar Allan Poe

#philosophy-of-furniture #architecture

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancetthat they were seeing more children who were being buggered than battered. About 300 cases were corroborated. The children were young – two-thirds were pre-school children – and anal abuse was more common than vaginal penetration. They also noted that ‘boys and girls seem to be at similar risk’. Almost half of the children who suffered anal abuse also showed a sign written up in the forensic textbooks as ‘anal dilation’, an anus opening when it was supposed to stay shut; opening and expecting entry. What the paediatricians were observing was not an acute sign, the effect of a single intrusion – a spasm or seizure – but a sign that was telling a story about everyday life; the anatomy of adaption. Anal dilation seemed to describe the architecture of abuse: it allowed the body to receive an incoming object, regularly. ↗

— Beatrix Campbell

#abusers #britain #child-abuse #cleveland #coercion

Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire. ↗

— Slavoj Žižek

#cinema #education #film #life #philosophy

Living well is an art that can be developed: a love of life and ability to take great pleasure from small offerings and assurance that the world owes you nothing and that every gift is exactly that, a gift. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#philosophy #art

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. ↗

— Ray Bradbury

#writing-philosophy #art

You become mature when you become the authority of your own life. ↗

— Joseph Campbell

#mythology #philosophy #spirituality #art

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. ↗

— Will Durant

#science #art

The warrior learns of the spiritual realm by dwelling on the cutting edge of the sword, standing at the edge of the fire pit, venturing right up to the edge of starvation if necessary. Vibrant and intense living is the warrior's form of worship. ↗

— Stephen K. Hayes

#life #martial-arts #ninja #philosophy #war

Nobody over here [in England] says 'six-thirty' or 'seven-thirty', they say 'hoppussix' and 'hoppusseven'. And 'in' at home is 'trendy' here and 'give it up' is 'pack it in' and 'never mind!' is 'not to worry!' ... and as Shaw once observed, we are two countries divided by a common language. I am now going to bed because it's quataposstwelve. ↗

— Helene Hanff

#home

Among peoples who possess a highly developed pugnacious instinct we find the greatest progress in the arts, sciences, social and political organization, commerce and industry. The instinct takes the milder form of rivalry which is the motive force of the great portion of the serious labors of mankind. ↗

— Holly Estil Cunningham

#instinct #philosophy #psychology #violence #art