Ware Quotes
The custom official was desperate, he did not know whether they were pictures, wood ware or even arms [about his abstract collage art, Schwitters exported to France in 1939]. I got the impression he had an inner struggle with two options, either to have me arrested or to call the lunatic asylum. Finally he did not want to make a fool of himself, and accepted they were paintings, especially because another customs official knew me personally and confirmed that I was an artist.
Kurt Schwitters
Among flower vases, the ware that is given the highest rank is old Iga, from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it commands the highest price. When old Iga has been dampened, its colors and its glow take on a beauty such as to awaken on afresh. Iga was fired at very high temperatures. The straw ash and the smoke from the fuel fell and flowed against the surface, and as the temperature dropped, became a sort of glaze. Because the colors were not fabricated but were rather the result of nature at work in the kiln, color patterns emerged in such varieties as to be called quirks and freaks of the kiln. The rough, austere, strong surfaces of old Iga take on a voluptuous glow when dampened. It breathes to the rhythm of the dew of the flowers.
Yasunari Kawabata
Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex.
Charles Dickens
You know that I do not share your opinion in this matter. That Spinozism and Atheism are to me two different things. That when I read Spinoza I can only explain him by reference to himself and that if it came to naming a book which, of all that I know, most agrees with my way of seeing things, then I would have to name the Ethics-even though by nature I do not share his way of seeing things. [Original in German: Du weißt daß ich über die Sache selbst nicht deiner Meinung bin. Daß mir Spinozismus und Atheismus zweyerlei ist. Daß ich den Spinoza wenn ich ihn lese mir nur aus sich selbst erklären kann, und daß ich, ohne seine Vorstellungsart von Natur selbst zu haben, doch wenn die Rede wäre ein Buch anzugeben, das unter allen die ich kenne, am meisten mit der meinigen übereinkommt, die Ethik nennen müsste.].
Baruch Spinoza
