hum

If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.

Ram Dass

George said:
‘You know we are on the wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can’t do without.’
George comes out really quite sensible at times. You’d be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.
[…]
Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!)

As the ship neared the tropics and the heat, boredom and gossip intensified, so too did the tensions, both alimentary and sexual. The filth in first class was as bad as it was in the third - from the shy newlyweds who kept half the ship awake by “reciting Spanish verbs” in their cabin at night, to the opera tenor who cruised the lower decks for peasant beauties, to the Swiss-Italian woman in black silk stockings who gaily betrayed her bookish husband with the Argentinian politician, the Tuscan adolescent and the opera tenor. As the old hunchback commented in despair, “Se ‘e porcaie pesassan, saiescimo zà a fondo”: “If filth was heavy, we’d be on the bottom already.”

John Dickie

Working with the artist comes first and making money is a happy accident that comes afterwards; hopefully.

At his trial, when Socrates was asked to propose his own punishment, he suggested a wage paid by the government and free dinners for the rest of his life.

“I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.”

A woman once told me that every time she wore Lanvin, men fell in love with her. I told her, “Ugh, I hope next time you will tell me that every time you wear Lanvin, you fall in love.” And she said, “What is the difference?” Passive and active.

Alber Elbaz

I have made the following discovery and I pass it on to the world: The evolution of culture is synonymous with the removal of ornament from utilitarian objects. I believed that with this discovery I was bringing joy to the world; it has not thanked me. People were sad and hung their heads […] Then I said: Weep not! See, therein lies the greatness of our age, that it is incapable of producing a new ornament.

But anyone who goes to the Ninth Simphony and then sits down and designs a wallpaper pattern is either a confidence trickster or a degenerate […] Anyone who goes around in a velvet coat today is not an artist but a buffoon or a house painter.

Freedom from ornament is a sign of spiritual strenght.

Be truthful, nature only sides with truth.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function.

Louis H. Sullivan