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Famous Michael Shindler Quotes

“Little stirs people to write as much as death’s approach.”

Writing Dying Death S Approach

Author:Michael Shindler

“A theology that can function as an aesthetic makes for a religion that worships the beautiful at the expense of all else and an aesthetic that can function as a theology makes for an art that is expressive only of goodness.”

Art Religion Goodness Theology Aesthetic

Author:Michael Shindler

“We're forgetting each plant's proper naming, Classifications we've learnt from reading; We stop recalling the links and logic, Accounts of the world's internal working, And I wonder—do you hear strange music?”

Logic Forgetting Naming Classifications

Author:Michael Shindler

“As in a longstanding civil war—art, religion, and all the other foot soldiers of history march with feet rising in contradiction and falling to the drumbeat of reconciliation toward a shared fate: a final battle and a final peace.”

Art Religion Peace History Fate Battle Civil War Reconciliation

Author:Michael Shindler

“Hear of this from a mouth that smiled; Hear this from the mouth of a child.”

Smile Child Mouth Hear

Book:Fret Not

Source: Fret Not

“To become what it is now art required a great sacrifice: the aesthetic paradigm that had given man all his most beautiful things.”

Art Beauty Sacrifice Aesthetic

Author:Michael Shindler

“The would-be brute, by dreaming of medieval bloodbaths, finds himself uninterested in mere parking lot brawls and the would-be lothario, by dreaming of Sadean spoilations, loses his interest in venturing so mild a thing as an unsolicited kiss. In this way, dreams offer us all those things which our lives deny and by their extravagance, dull our daily denials.”

Dreams Brute Bloodbaths Denials Lothario Sadean

Author:Michael Shindler

“To make America’s least employable citizens dependent on the whims of the state, rather than their neighbors, is to clear a path for demagogues.”

America Employment Demagogue

Author:Michael Shindler

“A great ox like a hill in a barren field Standing black against the dawn With body once broken, now healed, With silver-mended horns and brawn: He pushed past the sun And the mountains, unplowed immensities, And with his silver won A briar-crown of vanities.”

Vanity Silver Ox Vanities Brawn Briar Crown

Book:Fret Not

Source: Fret Not

“Whereas the pagans of yore groped after mystery in all the strange beauty of the world, the pagans of the 20th century, having supplanted nature with factories, saw the glimmer of the transcendental only in themselves. Hence, their longing for mystery—union in one sacred body, absolute order, and submission to an omnipotent lord—was manifested in an obscene eidolon palpable, for instance, in the Nazi motto, 'ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.”

Lord Mystery Nazi 20th Century Motto Transcendental Pagans

Author:Michael Shindler

“The Tower of Babel is one of those mythological narratives that, in the words of the 4th-century philosopher Sallustius, 'never happened, but always are.' Man in his arrogance always strives against his own nature and circumstances to bring together the different nations of the world and establish an order that can facilitate some lofty ideal and he always fails. Just as Nimrod’s tower fell, so did Alexander’s, Cyrus’s, Attila’s, and Napoleon’s. This sort of geopolitical project—even when buttressed by the best reasons and most noble goals—never succeeds.”

Tower Of Babel Nimrod

Author:Michael Shindler

“Plato’s heirs—armed with his methods, but unchained from his wistful predilections—abstracted away the faces of the pagan gods: the marbles that in Homer’s day were warm Olympian flesh were philosophized into dust and that dust into theology. Consequently, the labor of keeping beauty and goodness yoked became moot as their separation in the realm of experience, in art and religion—their correspondent spheres of human activity—became so obviously distinct. Christianity supplanted paganism and the art of yore, which had formerly been principally confined to civil and religious expression, was gradually supplanted by an art that was its own unique means by which humanity understood itself. In due course, following the birth of Romanticism, art stood on the field of history its own inexorable self.”

Philosophy Christianity Theology Plato Paganism Romanticism Olympian Homer

Author:Michael Shindler

“In a capitalist economy such as ours, money is the fuel of freedom. To take so much of it away from taxpayers to fund military bloat, which is neither necessary nor beneficial, is to not only deprive them of some good or service, but to deprive them of their choice, which is the essence of liberty.”

Liberty Taxpayers Military Spending

Author:Michael Shindler