“Pleasure takes place in the body, but satisfaction is of the soul, and so things which offer purely physical pleasure cannot help egging people on to consume more and more in search of a spiritual state the carnal thing is incapable of delivering. The economy of spiritual things is different because spirit is immaterial, intellectual, and unquantifiable. There is not “more Christ” in a small bite of the Eucharist than a large one, neither is the object blessed with a bucket of holy water more holy than an object blessed with a thimble full. Inasmuch as a thing appeals more to the spirit than the body, a man needs less of it, which is why many people have accidentally eaten an entire bag of Doritos in one sitting, but no one has ever accidentally read the entire gospel of St. John in one sitting.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Very good things exhaust the senses through the mind, while mediocre things pummel the senses without ever reaching the mind.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Twentieth century art unambiguously proclaims that the standards and conventions of beauty accepted by all Christian people in bygone eras have been wholeheartedly rejected— not edited and refined but degraded and discarded.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“In a society bent on progress, stability is treason.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Any society at war with the past will necessarily produce an endless tidal wave of cultural artifacts that are short-lived, for the longer any film or book or song lasts, the more adverse it is to progress.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“Beauty is what lies beyond usefulness. Beauty inspires loyalty and gives meaning to mere usefulness. We need useful things, but we love beautiful things. A building which is merely functional will not last, for people will not love it. They will get bored with it. The average football stadium now costs a billion dollars to build and lasts just thirty years, after which it appears dated, silly, and unfashionable. The Chartres Cathedral, on the other hand, is more beautiful than any sports complex on earth and it has been functional for more than 800 years. Beautiful things last because when they begin to fall apart, we tend to them, revive and restore them; however, when purely functional things fall apart, we tire of them and replace them.”
Source: Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity
“The whole morality of the Sermon on the Mount belongs here; man takes a truly voluptuous pleasure in violating himself by exaggerated demands and then deifying this something in his soul that is so tyrannically taxing. In each ascetic morality, man prays to one part of himself as god and also finds its necessary to diabolify the rest.”
Source: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
“The human animal, gifted with unique brainpower, stood askance from instinct's shackles, becoming a detached observer of the world. As the only creature daring to ask ‘why,’ it sought meaning and virgin-birthed the quadruplet firmaments of art, theology, politics, and philosophy.”
“Because that's all art is, in the end. One person trying to get another person they have never met to fall in love with them.”
Source: Margo's Got Money Troubles
“Can there be art without the human in it? Maybe that is what I wish to capture: beast as seen by beast, tree as seen by tree. I jest, but not really.”
Source: North Woods