A Quote by Jean de la Bruyere
Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.
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Art doesn't want to be familiar. It wants to astonish us. Or, in some cases, to enrage us. It wants to move us. To touch us. Not accommodate us, make us comfortable.
The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us. When the world seems familiar, when one has got used to existence, one has become an adult.
The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.
Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.
Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.
There is great work to be done, and the women will lead us. So I say, Astonish us with your genius. Inspire us with your creation. Work with one another. Endure the tribulations.
What we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small. What we want is to be defeated, decisively, by successively greater things
One of the proudest things I see is, now, 25 years after I graduated, when I go to a Syracuse sporting event, there's a senior or a junior from WAER broadcasting sports just the way we did, and just the way it happened a couple generations before us. That's a great legacy for the university and a great tradition that still continues to this day, and makes those of us who were a small part of it very very proud.
Life is very full of sex, or should be. As much as I admire Tolkien - and I do, he was a giant of fantasy and a giant of literature, and I think he wrote a great book that will be read for many years - you do have to wonder where all those Hobbits came from, since you can't imagine Hobbits having sex, can you? Well, sex is an important part of who we are. It drives us, it motivates us, it makes us do sometimes very noble things and it makes us do sometimes incredibly stupid things. Leave it out, and you've got an incomplete world.
Custom makes monsters of us all.
Nothing is small or great in God's sight. Whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling; and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.
It's not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.
We are a sum total of what we have learned from all who have taught us, both great and small.
Listen, baby, people do funny things. Specially us. The cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game, stay alive and in the game, makes us do funny things. Things we can't help. Things that make us hurt one another. We don't even know why.
None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.
I Iike listening to people talking. I'm really interested in people's lives and what makes us work, what makes us weak, at times, and things that can make us stronger.
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