Exquisite Quotes - page 9
The old town will not give you the time of your life; it is not a brazen hussy among cities, blinding you with its xanthous curls, kicking up its legs, inviting you to exquisite deviltries. Not at all. It is, if the truth must come out, a Perfect Lady. But for all its resultant narrowness, its niceness, its air of merely playing at being a city, it has, at bottom, the one quality which, in cities as in women, shames and survives all the rest. And that is the impalpable, indefinable, irresistible quality of charm.
H. L. Mencken
The great Teachers have all spoken with one voice. They have told us: 'Love one another.' They have told us that hate ceases not by hatred at any time, that hatred ceases but by love; but although that was taught by the Lord Buddha twenty-five centuries ago, although the Christ in His exquisite Sermon on the Mount pressed that same eternal teaching in words familiar to you all, where do we find one nation that puts these principles into practice, where is a single organization which is built according to that moral law?
Annie Besant
In my present insistence on high standards you will see that there is less self-indulgence than resolve and application. I do not let the Christian monopolize the ideal of perfection. I have my own virtue, which I am constantly cultivating and refining by teaching myself not to tolerate in me or my surroundings anything but the exquisite.
André Gide
Now for the third quality. For a long time I couldn't make out what Aquinas meant. He uses a figurative word (a very unusual thing for him) but I have solved it. Claritas is quidditas. After the analysis which discovers the second quality the mind makes the only logically possible synthesis and discovers the third quality. This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognise that the object is one integral thing, then we recognise that it is an organised composite structure, a thing in fact: finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognise that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.
James Joyce
I reject and disown all my pre-2011 writings and effusions, with the exception of my Greek translations, the poetry included in the published collection One Exquisite Silence ISBN 978-1484179932, some private letters written between 2002 and 2011, and those few items about my since revised 'numinous way' which are included in post-2012 publications such as The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos ISBN 978-1484096642. My rejection of all forms of extremism is explained in (i) the 2013 compilation Understanding and Rejecting Extremism ISBN 978-1484854266 and (ii) Myngath ISBN 978-1484110744. My weltanschauung - the result of my own pathei-mathos - is outlined in texts such as (i) the aforementioned The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos and (ii) Religion, Empathy, and Pathei-Mathos ISBN 978-1484097984.
David Myatt
