Yi-Fu Tuan quotes

In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art-the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting-is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold. (Yi-Fu Tuan)
America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D. C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.
Yi-Fu Tuan
Young children distinguish between good people and bad people, but, unless explicitly taught, they do not distinguish between foreigner and native.
Yi-Fu Tuan
Children learn early in life that they cannot always count on their parents' attention much less their smiles, a lesson in human unpredictability that has to be learned over and over again.
Yi-Fu Tuan
Only God creates ex nihilo. Humans can only create out of something that already exists, which means there has to be an earlier destruction phase.
Yi-Fu Tuan
Stars define civilization, as no single natural feature on Earth--tree, rock, stream, or mountain--can be said to define cultures.
Yi-Fu Tuan
To forgive is to erase a past, depriving it of its power to stain the present.
Yi-Fu Tuan
If each person can achieve greatness, so can each fall into baseness.
Yi-Fu Tuan
The world feels spacious and friendly when it accommodates our desires, and cramped when it frustrates them.
Yi-Fu Tuan