"You do not reach the sublime by degrees; the distance between it and the merely beautiful is infinite."

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël See all quotes by Anne Louise Germaine de Staël →

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“When once enthusiasm has been turned into ridicule, everything is undone except money and power.”

“Men do not change; they unmask themselves.”

“Let us then blend everything: love, religion, genius, with sunshine, perfume, music, and poetry.”

“Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.”

“Beauty is one in the universe, and, whatever form it assumes, it always arouses a religious feeling in the hearts of mankind.”

“Genius is essentially creative; it bears the stamp of the individual who possesses it.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolves into the beauty of an abstraction."

— Lewis H. Lapham

Literature1935–2024

#beauty

"Truth is not something in the distance; there is no path to it, there is neither your path nor my path; there is no devotional path, there is no path of knowledge or path of action, because truth has …"

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

Education1895–1986

#time

"Before we reach the majestic shores of the Promised Land, there is a frustrating and bewildering wilderness ahead. We must still face prodigious hilltops of opposition and gigantic mountains of resist…"

— Martin Luther King

Social Activism1929–1968

#justice

"I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy the cold comfort of the in between a little less than a human being a little less than a happy high a little less than a suicide the only things th…"

— Elliott Smith

Music1969–2003

#philosophy