Quotes about appearance
page 13

Thomas Carlyle photo
Will Eisner photo
Michael Bond photo

“Paddington…has become a part of the folk-lore of childhood, not because he appears in a great or even a particularly good book, but because there is something in his personality which lodges permanently in the imagination.”

Michael Bond (1926–2017) English author, creator of Paddington the Bear

Marcus Crouch The Nesbit Tradition: The Children's Novel in England, 1945-70 (London: Ernest Benn, 1972) p. 107.
Criticism

Isaac D'Israeli photo

“To bend and prostrate oneself to express sentiments of respect, appears to be a natural motion.”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Modes of Salutation, and Amicable Ceremonies, Observed in Various Nations.
Curiosities of Literature (1791–1834)

David Hume photo
Brooks D. Simpson photo
Asger Jorn photo

“It is said that my art has some typically Nordic features: the curving lines, the convolutions, the magical masks and staring eyes that appear in myths and folk art. This may be. My interest in the dynamics of Jugend style probably also comes into it.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote of Jorn, from: Tecken för liv, tecken till liv [Signs of life, the characters to life], interview by Marita Lindgren-Fridell, in Konstrevy (1963)
1959 - 1973, Various sources

Clive Staples Lewis photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Hakim Bey photo
Richard Leakey photo

“In order to be able to deceive intentionally, an animal must have a sense of how its actions appear to another individual. Such an ability requires self-awareness.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Will Eisner photo
William T. Sherman photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Howard Dean photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
John Muir photo

“One shining morning, at the head of the Pacheco Pass, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most divinely beautiful and sublime I have ever beheld. There at my feet lay the great central plain of California, level as a lake thirty or forty miles wide, four hundred long, one rich furred bed of golden Compositae. And along the eastern shore of this lake of gold rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, in massive, tranquil grandeur, so gloriously colored and so radiant that it seemed not clothed with light, but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city. Along the top, and extending a good way down, was a rich pearl-gray belt of snow; then a belt of blue and dark purple, marking the extension of the forests; and stretching along the base of the range a broad belt of rose-purple, where lay the miners' gold and the open foothill gardens — all the colors smoothly blending, making a wall of light clear as crystal and ineffably fine, yet firm as adamant. Then it seemed to me the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years in the midst of it, rejoicing and wondering, seeing the glorious floods of light that fill it, — the sunbursts of morning among the mountain-peaks, the broad noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, — it still seems to me a range of light.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Treasures of the Yosemite http://books.google.com/books?id=ZzWgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA483", The Century Magazine, volume XL, number 4 (August 1890) pages 483-500 (at page 483)
1890s

John Angell James photo
Dogen photo
Samuel Vince photo

“A very eminent writer has observed, that "the conversion of the Gentile world, whether we consider the difficulties attending it, the opposition made to it, the wonderful work wrought to accomplish it, or the happy effects and consequences of it, may be considered as a more illustrious evidence of God's power, than even our Saviour's miracles of casting out devils, healing the sick, and raising the dead." Indeed, a miracle said to have been wrought without any attending circumstances to justify such an exertion of divine power, could not easily be rendered credible; and our author's argument proves no more. If it were related, that about 1700 years ago, a man was raised from the dead, without its answering any other end than that of restoring him to life, Iconfess that no degree of evidence could induce me tobelieve it; but if the moral government of God appeared in that event, and there were circumstances attending it which could not be accounted for by any human means, the fact becomes credible. When two extraordinary events are thus connected, the proof of one established the truth of the other. Our author has reasoned upon the fact as standing alone, in which case it would not be easy to disprove some of his reasoning; but the fact should be considered in a moral view - as connected with the establishment of a pure religion, and it then becomes credible. In the proof of any circumstance, we must consider every principle which tends to establish it; whereas our author, by considering the case of a man said to have been raised from the dead, simpli in a physical point of view, without any reference to a moral end, endavours to show that it cannot be rendered credible; and, from such principles, we may admit his conclusions without affecting the credibility of Christianity. The general principle on which he establishes his argument, is not the great foundation upon which the evidence of Christianity rests. He says, "Notestimony can be sufficient to establish a miracle, unless it be of such a kind, that the falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endavours to prove." Now this reasoning, at furthest, can only be admitted in those cases where the fact has nothing but testimony to establish it. But the proofs of Christianity do not rest simply upon the testimony of its first promulgators, and that of those who were affterwards the instruments of communicating it; but they rest principally upon the acknowledged and very extraordinary affects which were produced by the preaching of a few unlearned, obscure persons, who taught "Christ crucified;" and it is upon these indisuptable matters of ffact which we reason; and when the effects are totally unaccountable upon any principle which we can collect from the operation of human means, we must either admit miracles, or admit an effect without an adequate cause. Also, when the proof of any position depends upon arguments drawn from various sources, all concutring to establish its turh, to select some one circumstance, and atrempt to show that that alone is not sufficient to render the fact credible, and thence infer that it is not ture, is a conclusion not to be admitted. But it is thus that our author has endavoured to destroy the credibiliry of Christianity, the evidences of which depend upon a great variety of circumstances and facts which are indisputably true, all cooperating to confirm its truth; but an examination of these falls not whithin the plan here proposed. He rests all his arguments upon the extraordinary nature of the fact, considered alone by itself; for a common fact, with the same evidence, would immediately be admitted. I have endavoured to show, that the extraordinary nature, as much as the mosst common events are necessary to fulfill the usual dispensations of Providence, and therefore the Deity was then direted by the same motive as in a more ordinary case, that of affording us such assitance as our moral condition renders necessary. In the establishment of a pur religion, the proof of its divine origin may require some very extraordinary circumstances which may never afterwards be requisite, and accordingly we find that they have not happened. Here is therefore a perfect concistencty in the operation of the Deity, in his moral government, and not a violation of the laws of nature: Secondly, the fact is immediately connected with others which are indisputably true, and which, without the supossition of the truth of that fact, would be, at least, equally miraculous. Thus I conceive the reasoning of our author to be totally inconclusive; and the argumentss which have been employed to prove the fallacy of his conclusions, appear at the same time, fully to justify our belief in, and prove the moral certainty of, our holy religion.”

Samuel Vince (1749–1821) British mathematician, astronomer and physicist

Source: The Credibility of Christianity Vindicated, p. 27; As quoted in " Book review http://books.google.nl/books?id=52tAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA262," in The British Critic, Volume 12 (1798). F. and C. Rivington. p. 262-263

Henry David Thoreau photo
Joseph McManners photo
Carl Barus photo
Sri Aurobindo photo

“It is not by these means [modern humanism and humanitarianism, idealism, etc. ] that humanity can get that radical change of its ways of life which is yet becoming imperative, but only by reaching the bed-rock of Reality behind,… not through mere ideas and mental formations, but by a change of the consciousness, an inner and spiritual conversion. But that is a truth for which it would be difficult to get a hearing in the present noise of all kinds of many-voiced clamour and confusion and catastrophe…. Science has missed something essential; it has seen and scrutinised what has happened and in a way how it has happened, but it has shut its eyes to something that made this impossible possible, something it is there to express. There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyse, but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila…. Another danger may then arise [once materialism begins to give way]… not of a final denial of the Truth, but the repetition in old or new forms of a past mistake, on one side some revival of blind fanatical obscurantist sectarian religionism, on the other a stumbling into the pits and quagmires of the vitalistic occult and the pseudo-spiritual'mistakes that made the whole real strength of the materialistic attack on the past and its credos. But these are phantasms that meet us always on the border line or in the intervening country between the material darkness and the perfect Splendour. In spite of all, the victory of the supreme Light even in the darkened earth-consciousness stands as the one ultimate certitude….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Undated
India's Rebirth

George Carlin photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Nigel Cumberland photo

“Yes, first impressions do count but every single impression counts. You cannot fake being positive, but you can practise and teach yourself to appear and act in a positive manner.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Source: Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), p.18

Pope Benedict XVI photo
Giovanni della Casa photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151
Variant translation:
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
As translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131

Yuval Noah Harari photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Charles Babbage photo
Camille Paglia photo

“The sixteenth century transformed Middle English into modern English. Grammar was up for grabs. People made up vocabulary and syntax as they went along. Not until the eighteenth century would rules of English usage appear. Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare’s characters. His language does not “make sense,” especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare’s main influence. Shakespeare’s words have “aura.””

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe.
Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 195

Daniel T. Gilbert photo

“Heider began by assuming that just as objects have enduring qualities that determine their appearances, so people have stable psychological characteristics that determine their behavior.”

Daniel T. Gilbert (1957) American psychologist

Source: "Ordinary personology." 1998, p. 94; As cited in Bertram F. Malle, "Attribution theories: How people make sense of behavior." Theories in social psychology (2011): 72-95; p. 74

Aron Ra photo
Elia M. Ramollah photo
Vernor Vinge photo

“We've watched the Homo Sapiens interest group since the first appearance of the Blight. Where is this "Earth" the humans claim to be from? "Half way around the galaxy," they say, and deep in the Slow Zone. Even their proximate origin, Nyjora, is conveniently in the Slowness. We see an alternative theory: Sometime, maybe further back than the last consistent archives, there was a battle between Powers. The blueprint for this "human race" was written, complete with communication interfaces. Long after the original contestants and their stories had vanished, this race happened to get in position where it could Transcend. And that Transcending was tailor-made, too, re-establishing the Power that had set the trap to begin with.We're not sure of the details, but a scenario such as this is inevitable. What we must do is also clear. Straumli Realm is at the heart of the Blight, obviously beyond all attack. But there are other human colonies. We ask the Net to help in identifying all of them. We ourselves are not a large civilization, but we would be happy to coordinate the information gathering, and the military action that is required to prevent the Blight's spread in the Middle Beyond. For nearly seventeen weeks, we've been calling for action. Had you listened in the beginning, a concerted strike might have been sufficient to destroy the Straumli Realm. Isn't the Fall of Relay enough to wake you up? Friends, if we act together we still have a chance.Death to vermin.”

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), p. 245.

Earl Warren photo
Aldous Huxley photo
François de La Rochefoucauld photo

“The desire to appear clever often prevents one from being so.”

Le désir de paraître habile empêche souvent de le devenir.
Maxim 199.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)

Kazimir Malevich photo

“By Suprematism, I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in the pictorial arts. From the Suprematist point of view, the appearances of natural objects are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling – in itself and completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked. Academic naturalism, the naturalism of the impressionists, of Cézannism, of Cubism, etc., are all so to speak nothing but dialectic methods, which in themselves in no way determine the true value of the work of art.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote of Malevich, 1927 in: Artists on Art; from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 451
Malevich valued Cezanne's art as a temporarily necessary but still 'provincial art' in the long developing line of modern art
1921 - 1930

Martin Buber photo

“Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.”

I and Thou (1923)

Frederick Douglass photo

“At 8 o’clock, the [body] of the hall was nearly filled with an intelligent and respectable looking audience – The exercises commenced with a patriotic song by the Hutchinsons, which was received with great applause. The Rev. H. H. Garnett opened the meeting stating that the black man, a fugitive from Virginia, who was announced to speak would not appear, as a communication had been received yesterday from the South intimating that, for prudential reasons, it would not be proper for that person to appear, as his presence might affect the interests and safety of others in the South, both white persons and colored. He also stated that another fugitive slave, who was at the battle of Bull Run, proposed when the meeting was announced to be present, but for a similar reason he was absent; he had unwillingly fought on the side of Rebellion, but now he was, fortunately where he could raise his voice on the side of Union and universal liberty. The question which now seemed to be prominent in the nation was simply whether the services of black men shall be received in this war, and a speedy victory be accomplished. If the day should ever come when the flag of our country shall be the symbol of universal liberty, the black man should be able to look up to that glorious flag, and say that it was his flag, and his country’s flag; and if the services of the black men were wanted it would be found that they would rush into the ranks, and in a very short time sweep all the rebel party from the face of the country”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Douglass Monthly https://web.archive.org/web/20160309192511/http://deadconfederates.com/tag/black-confederates/#_edn2 (March 1862), p. 623
1860s

Hubert H. Humphrey photo
St. George Tucker photo
Samuel Beckett photo

“My appearance still made people laugh, with that hearty jovial laugh so good for the health.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The End (1946)

Pierre Hadot photo

“It is misinterpretation and incomprehension which, very often, provoked an important evolution in the history of philosophy and which, notably, led to the appearance of new notions.”

Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher

Ce sont les contresens et les incompréhensions qui, très souvent, ont provoqué une évolution importante dans l’histoire de la philosophie, et qui, notamment, ont fait apparaître des notions nouvelles.
Études de philosophie ancienne (1998)

Leonid Kantorovich photo

“The university immediately published my pamphlet, and it was sent to fifty People’s Commissariats. It was distributed only in the Soviet Union, since in the days just before the start of the World War it came out in an edition of one thousand copies in all.
Soviet Union, since in the days just before the start of the World War it came out in an edition of one thousand copies in all. The number of responses was not very large. There was quite an interesting reference from the People’s Commissariat of Transportation in which some optimization problems directed at decreasing the mileage of wagons was considered, and a good review of the pamphlet appeared in the journal "The Timber Industry."
At the beginning of 1940 I published a purely mathematical version of this work in Doklady Akad. Nauk [76], expressed in terms of functional analysis and algebra. However, I did not even put in it a reference to my published pamphlet—taking into account the circumstances I did not want my practical work to be used outside the country
In the spring of 1939 I gave some more reports—at the Polytechnic Institute and the House of Scientists, but several times met with the objection that the work used mathematical methods, and in the West the mathematical school in economics was an anti-Marxist school and mathematics in economics was a means for apologists of capitalism. This forced me when writing a pamphlet to avoid the term "economic" as much as possible and talk about the organization and planning of production; the role and meaning of the Lagrange multipliers had to be given somewhere in the outskirts of the second appendix and in the semi Aesopian language.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

L.V. Kantorovich (1996) Descriptive Theory of Sets and Functions. p. 41; As cited in: K. Aardal, ‎George L. Nemhauser, ‎R. Weismantel (2005) Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science, p. 19-20

Kent Hovind photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Gregor Mendel photo

“Jesus let the infidels and Jews aside, he appeared only to the chosen apostles, he was concerned only with the faithful believers. To these he taught, rebuked, and sanctified, in order to perfect them to perfect the saints. This not only made sin and death be taken away from us, but by the resurrection of the Son of God grace was also obtained.”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Excerpt from a sermon on Easter delivered by Mendel, found in Folia Mendeliana (1966), Volume 6, Moravian Museum in Brünn.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus ließ die Ungläubigen und Juden beiseite, er erschien nur den auserwählten Aposteln, er befaßte sich nur mit den treuen Gläubigen. Diese belehrte er, tadelte er und heiligte er, um sie zu vervollkommnen zu vollendeten Heiligen. i Nicht bloss Sünde und Tod ist von uns genommen, sondern durch die Auferstehung des Gottessohnes ist auch seine Gnade gewonnen.

“[The Many-worlds interpretation is the] only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world.”

Hugh Everett (1930–1982) American physicist, author of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/everett/.

Louis Hémon photo

“Corruption appears to be a universal phenomenon that lays its own imperious claims on the world, and therefore it is the duty of all nations to prepare themselves against its onslaught by taking proper precautions.”

Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) British lecturer, novelist, historian, poet and biographer

Introduction, p. viii
The Corrupt Society - From Ancient Greece To Present-Day America (1975)

Victor Davis Hanson photo
Mircea Eliade photo
Ernst Mach photo

“Not bodies produce sensations, but element-complexes (sensation-complexes) constitute the bodies. When the physicist considers the bodies as the permanent reality, the `elements' as the transient appearance, he does not realise that all `bodies' are only mental symbols for element-complexes”

Ernst Mach (1838–1916) Austrian physicist and university educator

sensation-complexes
Source: 20th century, The Analysis of Sensations (1902), p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 33

Warren Farrell photo
Pierre-Jean de Béranger photo

“p. 651Abstract. Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing. Input analysis is thought to be initially "preconscious," "pre-attentive," fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by "conscious," "focal-attentive" analysis which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity. The present target article reviews evidence that consciousness performs none of these functions. Consciousness nearly always results from focal-attentive processing (as a form of output) but does not itself  enter into this or any other form of human information processing. This suggests that the term "conscious process" needs re-examination. Consciousness appears to be necessary in a variety of tasks because they require focal-attentive processing; if consciousness is absent, focal-attentive processing is absent. Viewed from a first-person perspective, however, conscious states are causally effective. First-person accounts are complementary to third-person accounts. Although they can be translated into third-person accounts, they cannot be reduced to them.”

Max Velmans (1942) British psychologist

Is human information processing conscious?, 1991

Frederic Dan Huntington photo
John Constable photo

“This appearance of the Evening was… just after a very heavy rain — more rain in the night and very — [? light] wind which continued all the — day following while making – this sketch observed the Moon easing – very beautifully… [in the] due East over the — heavy clouds from which the late showers – had fallen.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Inscription: 12 September, 1821, written on the back of 'Hampstead Heath, Sun setting over Harrow,' his sketch in oil on paper; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London. 1993), p. 221
1820s

Santiago Ramón y Cajal photo

“There are no small problems. Problems that appear small are large problems that are not understood”

Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852–1934) Spanish neuroscientist

Advice for a Young Investigator (1897), p. 17

Thomas Carlyle photo
Marie-Louise von Franz photo
Pat Conroy photo

“Here is how my father appeared to me as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come crawling out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought we were being raised by Zeus and Athena. After Happy Hour my father would drive his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children. He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol, and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward the home place. My sister, Carol, stationed at the door, would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper toward the door to watch his entry. The door would be flung open and the strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter pilot!" He would then line his seven kids up against the wall and say, "Who's the greatest of them all?" "You are, O Great Santini, you are." "Who knows all, sees all, and hears all?" "You do, O Great Santini, you do."”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

We were not in the middle of a normal childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we would ever have. For all we knew other men were coming home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand by for a chiropractor".
Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Vanna Bonta photo

“Little did the artist know, who neglected his appearance in favor of his work, that the years would produce a breed that spent hours meticulously acquiring a neglected look to appear like an artist.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Inversion"
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Confucius photo

“Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Hendrik Werkman photo

“The subject reports itself, it is never looked for. Afterwards a small drawing will follow for the color-planes which are determined immediately. These colors will be printed by large logs and updated and enlivened with the hand-roller. For pressing I use an old hand-press with lever (from c. 1800)... Sometimes it is necessary to press heavily, other times only very light. Sometimes one half of the block is rolled in [with ink] bold, the other half only skimpy. By first printing sometimes the first layer of paint on a piece of paper, a gentle tint appears which is then printed on the original. Another time I print the first print of the paper back on the original... As soon as the color-planes have been applied, the first state is reached, so to say..
.. Of course all kinds of side-steps can be made, while working. In case of enlivening the picture - both in terms of color or decoration - the main goal I always keep in mind.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Het onderwerp meldt zichzelf en wordt nooit gezocht, daarna volgt een kleine tekening voor de kleurvlakken die meteen vaststaan. Deze kleuren worden met groote houtblokken gedrukt en met de handrol bijgewerkt en verlevendigt. Als pers gebruik ik een oude handpers met hefboom (c. 1800).. .Soms is het noodig zwaar te drukken, soms heel licht; soms wordt de ene helft van het blok vet ingerold [met inkt], de andere helft schraal, ook wordt door eerst op een stuk papier de eerste laag verf af te drukken een lichte tint gekregen die dan op het origineel afgedrukt wordt, een andere keer druk ik de eerste druk van het papier weer op het origineel af.. Zijn de kleurvlakken aangebracht, dan is als het ware de eerste staat bereikt..
.Het spreekt vanzelf dat onder het werk verschillende zijsprongetjes gemaakt kunnen worden. Ter verlevendiging, zowel wat kleur als wat versiering aangaat: het hoofddoel staat steeds voor oogen.
Quote from Werkman's letter (6.) to August Henkels, 24 Jan. 1941; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 134
1940's

Richard Leakey photo
Norman Vincent Peale photo
Marc Chagall photo
Barbara W. Tuchman photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Robert Wilson Lynd photo

“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”

Robert Wilson Lynd (1879–1949) Irish writer

Searchlights and Nightingales https://books.google.com/books?id=z7pCAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22The+belief+in+the+possibility+of+a+short+decisive+war+appears+to+be+one+of+the+most+ancient+and+dangerous+of+human+illusions.%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22human+illusions%22 [Google Books snippet view only] (1939), p. 67.

Michel Foucault photo
James Frazer photo

“In point of fact magicians appear to have often developed into chiefs and kings.”

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 6, Magicians as Kings.

Leo Tolstoy photo

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

Georges Bataille photo
Patrick Matthew photo
Franz Marc photo
Prince photo
Giacomo Casanova photo
Francis Place photo
Julio Cortázar photo

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")


To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.


Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.


The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.


Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.


But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Dane Clark photo
Karl Mannheim photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
Jonathan Edwards photo