“Blue color is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a source of delight”
Examine well the channels of your
admiration, and you will find that they are, in verity, as unchangeable
as the channels of your heart's blood; that just as by the pressure of a
bandage, or by unwholesome and perpetual action of some part of the
body, that blood may be wasted or arrested, and in its stagnancy cease
to nourish the frame, or in its disturbed flow affect it with incurable
disease, so also admiration itself may, by the bandages of fashion,
bound close over the eyes and the arteries of the soul, be arrested in
its natural pulse and healthy flow; but that wherever the artificial
pressure is removed, it will return into that bed which has been traced
for it by the finger of God.
10. Consider this subject well, and you will find that custom has indeed
no real influence upon our feelings of the beautiful, except in dulling
and checking them; that is to say, it will and does, as we advance in
years, deaden in some degree our enjoyment of all beauty, but it in no
wise influences our determination of what is beautiful, and what is not.
You see the broad blue sky every day over your heads; but you do not for
that reason determine blue to be less or more beautiful than you did at
first; you are unaccustomed to see stones as blue as the sapphire, but
you do not for that reason think the sapphire less beautiful than other
stones. The blue color is everlastingly appointed by the Deity to be a
source of delight; and whether seen perpetually over your head, or
crystallized once in a thousand years into a single and incomparable
stone, your acknowledgment of its beauty is equally natural, simple, and
instantaneous. Pardon me for engaging you in a metaphysical discussion;
for it is necessary to the establishment of some of the greatest of all
architectural principles that I should fully convince you of this great
truth, and that I should quite do away with the various objections to
it, which I suppose must arise in your minds. Of these there is one more
which I must briefly meet. You know how much confusion has been
introduced into the subject of criticism, by reference to the power of
Association over the human heart; you know how often it has been said
that custom must have something to do with our ideas of beauty, because
it endears so many objects to the affections. But, once for all, observe
that the powers of association and of beauty are two entirely distinct
powers,--as distinct, for instance, as the forces of gravitation and
electricity.
He who has truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.
It acted first, as before noticed, in leading
the attention of all men to words instead of things; for it was
discovered that the language of the middle ages had been corrupt, and
the primal object of every scholar became now to purify his style. To
this study of words, that of forms being added, both as of matters of
the first importance, half the intellect of the age was at once absorbed
in the base sciences of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; studies utterly
unworthy of the serious labor of men, and necessarily rendering those
employed upon them incapable of high thoughts or noble emotion. Of the
debasing tendency of philology, no proof is needed beyond once reading
a grammarian's notes on a great poet: logic is unnecessary for men who
can reason; and about as useful to those who cannot, as a machine for
forcing one foot in due succession before the other would be to a man
who could not walk: while the study of rhetoric is exclusively one for
men who desire to deceive or be deceived; he who has the truth at his
heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue, or, if he
fear it, it is because the base rhetoric of dishonesty keeps the truth
from being heard.
§ C. The study of these sciences, therefore, naturally made men shallow
and dishonest in general; but it had a peculiarly fatal effect with
respect to religion, in the view which men took of the Bible. Christ's
teaching was discovered not to be rhetorical, St. Paul's preaching not
to be logical, and the Greek of the New Testament not to be grammatical.
The stern truth, the profound pathos, the impatient period, leaping from
point to point and leaving the intervals for the hearer to fill, the
comparatively Hebraized and unelaborate idiom, had little in them of
attraction for the students of phrase and syllogism; and the chief
knowledge of the age became one of the chief stumbling-blocks to its
religion.
§ CI. But it was not the grammarian and logician alone who was thus
retarded or perverted; in them there had been small loss. The men who
could truly appreciate the higher excellences of the classics were
carried away by a current of enthusiasm which withdrew them from every
other study.
To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty
One class of circumstances determines the
weight of the attaching punishment; the other, the claim to remission of
punishment: and since it is not easy for men to estimate the relative
weight, nor possible for them to know the relative consequences, of
crime, it is usually wise in them to quit the care of such nice
measurements, and to look to the other and clearer condition of
culpability; esteeming those faults worst which are committed under
least temptation. I do not mean to diminish the blame of the injurious
and malicious sin, of the selfish and deliberate falsity; yet it seems
to me, that the shortest way to check the darker forms of deceit is to
set watch more scrupulous against those which have mingled, unregarded
and unchastised, with the current of our life. Do not let us lie at all.
Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and
another as unintended. Cast them all aside: they may be light and
accidental; but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all
that; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them,
without over care as to which is largest or blackest. Speaking truth is
like writing fair, and comes only by practice; it is less a matter of
will than of habit, and I doubt if any occasion can be trivial which
permits the practice and formation of such a habit. To speak and act
truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps
as meritorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty; and it is
a strange thought how many men there are, as I trust, who would hold to
it at the cost of fortune or life, for one who would hold to it at the
cost of a little daily trouble. And seeing that of all sin there is,
perhaps, no one more flatly opposite to the Almighty, no one more
"wanting the good of virtue and of being," than this of lying, it is
surely a strange insolence to fall into the foulness of it on light or
on no temptation, and surely becoming an honorable man to resolve that,
whatever semblances or fallacies the necessary course of his life may
compel him to bear or to believe, none shall disturb the serenity of his
voluntary actions, nor diminish the reality of his chosen delights.
II. If this be just and wise for truth's sake, much more is it necessary
for the sake of the delights over which she has influence. For, as I
advocated the expression of the Spirit of Sacrifice in the acts and
pleasures of men, not as if thereby those acts could further the cause
of religion, but because most assuredly they might therein be infinitely
ennobled themselves, so I would have the Spirit or Lamp of Truth clear
in the hearts of our artists and handicraftsmen, not as if the truthful
practice of handicrafts could far advance the cause of truth, but
because I would fain see the handicrafts themselves urged by the spurs
of chivalry: and it is, indeed, marvellous to see what power and
universality there is in this single principle, and how in the
consulting or forgetting of it lies half the dignity or decline of every
art and act of man.
“The quality of expectations determines the quality of our action.”
“Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have!”
“One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, I have it, merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.”
“It is not the quantity but the quality of knowledge which determines the minds dignity.”
“Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
“If you cant describe what you are doing as a process, you dont know what youre doing.”
“Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.”
“Quality is everyones responsibility.”
“Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.”
“The quality of life is determined by its activities.”
“When youre out of quality youre out of business.”
“Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.”
“The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.”
“Be willing to make decisions. Thats the most important quality in a good leader. Dont fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You must be willing to fire.”
“Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to intellectual abstractions.”
“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.”
“The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves.”
