“We call interconnected order beautiful. When interrupted, we call it chaos.”
The Cosmos as a Poem (2010)
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Vanna Bonta 205
Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice art… 1958–2014Related quotes
“We create order out of chaos, beauty and meaning out of ugly randomness.”
Source: The Throne of Fire
Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 103.
“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
Variant: It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Source: The Secret History
“The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening.”
Introduction
The Female Eunuch (1970)
Context: The fear of freedom is strong in us. We call it chaos or anarchy, and the words are threatening. We live in a true chaos of contradicting authorities, an age of conformism without community, of proximity without communication. We could only fear chaos if we imagined that it was unknown to us, but in fact we know it very well. It is unlikely that the techniques of liberation spontaneously adopted by women will be in such fierce conflict as exists between warring self-interests and conflicting dogmas, for they will not seek to eliminate all systems but their own. However diverse they may be, they need not be utterly irreconcilable, because they will not be conquistatorial.
“It is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful.”
An Essay on the Beautiful
Context: It is by participation of species that we call every sensible object beautiful. Thus, since everything void of form is by nature fitted for its reception, as far as it is destitute of reason and form it is base and separate from the divine reason, the great fountain of forms; and whatever is entirely remote from this immortal source is perfectly base and deformed. And such is matter, which by its nature is ever averse from the supervening irradiations of form. Whenever, therefore, form accedes, it conciliates in amicable unity the parts which are about to compose a whole; for being itself one it is not wonderful that the subject of its power should tend to unity, as far as the nature of a compound will admit. Hence beauty is established in multitude when the many is reduced into one, and in this case it communicates itself both to the parts and to the whole. But when a particular one, composed from similar parts, is received it gives itself to the whole, without departing from the sameness and integrity of its nature. Thus at one and the same time it communicates itself to the whole building and its several parts; and at another time confines itself to a single stone, and then the first participation arises from the operations of art, but the second from the formation of nature. And hence body becomes beautiful through the communion supernally proceeding from divinity.
Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 221.
“This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt : in other cases it is generally called kindliness.”
Hic conatus aliquid agendi et etiam omittendi ea sola de causa ut hominibus placeamus, vocatur ambitio præsertim quando adeo impense vulgo placere conamur ut cum nostro aut alterius damno quædam agamus vel omittamus; alias humanitas appellari solet.
Part III, Prop. XXIX
Ethics (1677)
“All right you fucks, shut up! We got a call to order!”
As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s