“Jackson Pollock and Hugh Hefner both rose to prominence in the 1950s, though Pollock’s appeal was that no one understood him, and Hefner’s appeal was that no one misunderstood him. When Modern men think of art, they tend to think of such highs and lows. In the midst of this daring game of extremes, art lost the common touch.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“She was a wild ocean. And he had always seen people giving up while trying to swim in her and swim back to the shore before they could drown. He always hesitated about that adventure. He was scared of failing to swim, and drowning to death. But he was never able to stop thinking about how the adventure could end up. He finally made his mind up and started swimming. And eventually, he gave up against the waves and the storms she created and he began to drown. But the moment he stopped fighting to survive, she slowly embraced him inside her arms. And he began to realise that everything was very different than what he had always imagined. He could feel every breath he took there, better than any place he had ever lived. She was splendid and he never felt like swimming away from her arms ever.”
Source: The Abandoned Paradise: Unraveling the beauty of untouched thoughts and dreams
“We want to like old things. We want to like things of great beauty. When we imagine ourselves as the kind of people who love beautiful, old things, we enjoy the fantasy.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Very beautiful things become harder to like the more we give ourselves over to the spectacular, sexy, shocking, ultra-sensual, fashionable art and ethics of Modernity. So far as acquiring good taste is concerned, balance is a myth. Every blockbuster film a man watches makes the task of reading Paradise Lost and Jane Eyre seem more dull and more pointless.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Mediocre art not only hinders our ability to understand other people, it demands that we interpret our own lives through a laughably narrow range of emotions largely defined and curated by the unmarried, agnostic, pro-choice twentysomethings who now rule our culture.”
Source: Will Heaven Be Boring?: A Conversation About Beauty and Good Taste
“In "A Stolen Life," Dugard’s ability to think through questions of suffering, love, hope, and justice is indistinguishable from that of people her age who have lived "normally,” immersed in the world of blockbuster films, disposable fashion, popular music, easy virtue, virtue signaling, screen addiction, trendy political causes, and banal propaganda. The further I got into "A Stolen Life," the more I realized Dugard sounded just like the young women (and men) whose work I read in college writing workshops. My conclusion is both horrifying and offensive: for all the good our freedom is doing us we might as well have been locked up in a dungeon with demoniacs. The effects of living freely in the Modern world are not easily distinguishable from the effects of living in captivity with a psychopath.”
“The Modern world is arranged such that a free man with a moderate salary could more or less purchase the life of an inmate for himself and even prefer such a life to a conventional life of freedom.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“We do not deserve a better culture than the one we have; every culture is perfectly suited to the music it produces, the churches it builds, and the poems it writes. We cannot lament our inability to build a fitting sequel to St. Peter’s Basilica without simultaneously lamenting our complete lack of a theology that might compel us to do so.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“A man is free to do good to the extent that he does good. If a man claims he could do good, but doesn’t do it, he either doesn’t know what goodness is or he doesn’t know what freedom means.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“At fifty most women are old bags, used up and wrinkled, ready for the garbage can. But as I have been kind to the years, the years have been kind to me; I too know how to make a deal. I don't claim prettiness. Mine is a mature face, a face which tells a story. Many stories. It is a face which survives to tell.”
Source: Safe Houses