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Renaissance Quotes

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Renaissance Quotes

“Those who like to interpret historical facts symbolically may recognize in this the spirit of a specifically "modern" conception of the world which permits the subject to assert itself against the object as something independent and equal; whereas classical antiquity did not as yet permit the explicit formulation of this contrast; and whereas the Middle Ages believed the subject as well as the object to be submerged in a higher unity.”

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Book:Meaning in the Visual Arts
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“During periods of root expansion things have always looked as confused and topsy-turvy and purposeless as they do now. The whole Renaissance is supposed to have resulted from the topsy-turvy feeling caused by Columbus’ discovery of a new world. It just shook people up. The topsy-turviness of that time is recorded everywhere. There was nothing in the flat-earth views of the Old and New Testaments that predicted it. Yet people couldn’t deny it. The only way they could assimilate it was to abandon the entire medieval outlook and enter into a new expansion of reason.”

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Book:Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
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“Killing, raping and looting have been common practices in religious societies, and often carried out with clerical sanction. The catalogue of notorious barbarities – wars and massacres, acts of terrorism, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the chopping off of thieves’ hands, the slicing off of clitorises and labia majora, the use of gang rape as punishment, and manifold other savageries committed in the name of one faith or another — attests to religion’s longstanding propensity to induce barbarity, or at the very least to give it free rein. The Bible and the Quran have served to justify these atrocities and more, with women and gay people suffering disproportionately. There is a reason the Middle Ages in Europe were long referred to as the Dark Ages; the millennium of theocratic rule that ended only with the Renaissance (that is, with Europe’s turn away from God toward humankind) was a violent time. Morality arises out of our innate desire for safety, stability and order, without which no society can function; basic moral precepts (that murder and theft are wrong, for example) antedated religion. Those who abstain from crime solely because they fear divine wrath, and not because they recognize the difference between right and wrong, are not to be lauded, much less trusted. Just which practices are moral at a given time must be a matter of rational debate. The 'master-slave' ethos – obligatory obeisance to a deity — pervading the revealed religions is inimical to such debate. We need to chart our moral course as equals, or there can be no justice.”

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Author:Jeffrey Tayler
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“The medieval period based its scriptural exegesis upon the Vulgate translation of the Bible. There was no authorized version of this text, despite the clear need for a standardized text that had been carefully checked against its Hebrew and Greek originals. A number of versions of the text were in circulation, their divergences generally being overlooked. It was not until 1592 than an 'official' version of the text was produced by the church authorities, sensitive to the challenges to the authority of the Vulgate by Renaissance humanist scholars and Protestant theologians.”

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Book:The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation
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“Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists.”

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Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“Compare with Greek art, modern classical art is lacking in warmth and immediacy; it has a derived, retrospective, and, even in the Renaissance, a more or less classicistic character. It It is the reflection of a society which, filled with reminiscences of Roman heroism and medieval chivalry, tries to appear to be something which it is not, by following an artificially produced social and moral code, and which stylizes the whole pattern of its life in accordance with this fictitious scheme. Classical art describes this society as it wants to see itself and as it wants to be seen. There is hardly a feature in this art which would not, on closer examination, prove to be anything more than the translation into artistic terms of the aristocratic, conservative ideals cherished by this society striving for permanence and continuity. The whole artistic fromalism of the Cinquecento merely corresponds to the formalized system of moral conceptions and decorum which the upper class of the period imposes on itself. Just as the aristocracy and the aristocratically minded circles of society subject life to the rule of a formal code, in order to preserve it from the anarchy of the emotions, so they also submit the expression of the emotions in art to the censorship of definite, abstract, and impersonal forms.”

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Book:The Social History of Art: Volume 2: Renaissance, Mannerism, Baroque
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“آسانی آموزش زبان لاتینی برای ایتالیاییان، و فراوانی بقایای آثار هنری دوران باستان در آن کشور، راه را برای گرایش مردم ایتالیا به فرهنگ کلاسیک هموار ساخت؛ و چند عامل دیگر مانند سیرت قومی که با گذشت زمان دگرگون شده بود، و نهادهای سیاسی که لومباردها از آلمان وارد کرده بودند، و کلیسا، با آن گرایش به هم آمیختند و‌ روح مدرن ایتالیایی را که مقدر بود سرمشق و آرمان تمامی دنیای باختر زمین باشد، به دست آوردند.”

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Book:The Civilisaion of The Renaissance In Italy 1928 [Leather Bound]
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“As the men of the age were not accustomed to see any excellence or greater perfection than the things thus produced, they greatly admired them, and considered them to be the type of perfection, barbarous as they were. Yet some rising spirits, aided by some quality in the air of certain places, so far purged themselves of this crude style”

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Book:[(The Lives of the Artists )] [Author: Giorgio Vasari] [Dec-2008]
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“In his case, the decisive factor was the study of Ancient Greek, made possible when in 1397 Salutati invited the preeminent Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysolaras to reside in Florence and give classes in a language that had been almost completely forgotten. "At the coming of Chrysoloras," Bruni later recalled, "I was made to halt in my choice of lives, seeing that I held it wrong to desert law, and yet I reckoned it a crime to omit so great an occasion of learning the Greek literature." The lure proved irresistible: "Conquered at last by these reasonings, I delivered myself over to Chrysolaras with such passion that what I had received from him by day in hours of waking, occupied my mind at night in hours of sleep.”

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Book:The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
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“The Renaissance was the culture of a wealthy and powerful upper class, on the crest of the wave which was whipped up by the storm of new economic forces. The masses who did not share the wealth and power of the ruling group had lost the security of their former status and had become a shapeless mass, to be flattered or to be threatened—but always to be manipulated and exploited by those in power. A new despotism arose side by side with the new individualism. Freedom and tyranny, individually and disorder, were inextricably interwoven. The Renaissance was not a culture of small shopkeepers and petty bourgeois but of wealthy nobles and burghers. Their economic activity and their wealth gave them a feeling of freedom and a sense of individually. But at the same time, these same people had lost something: the security and feeling of belonging which the medieval social structure had offered. They were more free, but they were also more alone. They used their power and wealth to squeeze the last ounce of pleasure out of life; but in doing so, they had to use ruthlessly every means, from physical torture to psychological manipulation, to rule over the masses and to check their competitors within their own class. All human relationships were poisoned by this fierce life-and-death struggle for the maintenance of power and wealth. Solidarity with one's fellow man—or at least with the members of one's own class—was replaced by a cynical detached attitude; other individuals were looked upon as "objects" to be used and manipulated, or they were ruthlessly destroyed if it suited one's own ends. The individual was absorbed by a passionate egocentricity, an insatiable greed for power and wealth. As a result of all this, the successful individual's relation to his own self, his sense of security and confidence were poisoned too. His own self became as much an object of manipulation to him as other persons had become. We have reasons to doubt whether the powerful masters of Renaissance capitalism were as happy and as secure as they are often portrayed. It seems that the new freedom brought two things to them: an increased feeling of strength and at the same time an increased isolation, doubt, scepticism, and—resulting from all these—anxiety. It is the same contradiction that we find in the philosophical writings of the humanists. Side by side with their emphasis on human dignity, individuality, and strength, they exhibited insecurity and despair in their philosophy.”

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Book:Escape from Freedom
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“We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy own, no gift peculiarly thine, that thou mayest feel as thine own, have as thine own, possess as thine own, the seat, the form, the gifts which thou thyself shalt desire. A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou will fix the limits of nature for thyself. I have placed thee at the centre of the world, that from there thou mayest more conveniently look around and see whatsoever is in the world. Neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal have We made thee. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honourable, art the molder and maker of thyself.”

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Book:Pico della Mirandola: Oration on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary
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“Now having travelled from the pride of man in the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment down to the present despair, we can understand where modern people are. They have no place for a personal God. But equally they have no place for man as man, or for love, or for freedom, or for significance. This brings a crucial problem. Beginning only from man himself, people affirm that man is only a machine. But those who hold this position cannot live like machines! If they could, there would be no tensions in their intellectual position or in their lives. But even people who believe they are machines cannot live like machines, and thus they must “leap upstairs” against their reason and try to find something which gives meaning to life, even though to do so they have to deny their reason. This was a solution Leonardo da Vinci and the men of the Renaissance never would have accepted, even if, like Leonardo they ended their thinking in despondency. They would not have done so, for they would have considered it intellectual suicide to separate meaning and values from reason this way. And they would have been right. Such a solution is intellectual suicide, and one may question the intellectual integrity of those who accept such a position when their starting point was pride in the sufficiency of human reason.”

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Author:Francis A. Schaeffer
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“Fastest Storm by Stewart Stafford The fastest storm fell over us, A rapid drop down a lift shaft, The moon's spotlight blocked, Wrapped tight in venomousness. And under a wicked hand fallen, The venal and honourable in flux, A pantheon of money and might, Gloved hand night clawed larceny. The storm passed, fading into folklore, Only by swift valour blocking knavery, Clouds parted, cataracts cleared eyes, A renaissance spark became an inferno. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“نخستین بار رنسانس کوشید به زندگی سر و سامانی ببخشد و زندگی خانوادگی را همچون اثر هنری منظم سازد. اقتصاد شکوفا و خانه سازی به شیوه ی عاقلانه، برای وصول بدین هدف موثر واقع شد. ولی عامل اصلی، تفکر خردمندانه درباره ی همه ی مسائل مربوط به روابط اجتماعی و تربیت و سازمان دادن خانه و خانواده بود.”

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Book:The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy 1
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“There was a time in the ancient world - a very long time - in which the central cultural problem must have seemed an inexhaustible outpouring of books. Where to put them all? How to organize them on the groaning shelves? How to hold the profusion of knowledge in one's head? The loss of this plenitude would have been virtually inconceivable to anyone living in its midst. Then, not all at once but with the cumulative force of a mass extinction, the whole enterprise came to an end. What looked stable turned out to be fragile, and what had seemed for all time was only for the time being.”

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Book:The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
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“In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli’s gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.”

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Book:The Gondola Maker
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“We saw that the period of the Middle Ages was dominated by Scholasticism, that is, the reason which becomes autonomous, reason which is placed above faith. And this reason, as Kireyevsky very well saw, in the nineteenth century when he was criticizing the West from the Orthodox point of view, very quickly turned against Christianity. First it was supposed to be the handmaiden of faith and serve Christianity and prove all the dogmas of faith and prove a great many other things also based upon authority, the authority both of Scripture, of some early Fathers, mostly Augustine, and Aristotle, since it was believed that Aristotle had the true view of nature. But in the age of the Renaissance, this reason turned against religion. Because if it’s [reason is] autonomous, it’s able to develop its own principles; there’s no reason why it should be bound to the religious content. And also we saw in the Middle Ages that the great movements — Francis and Joachim — were very monastically, ascetically oriented. But in the Renaissance, there was a complete reaction against that. And again, this simple matter of the context in which the new ideas arose changed; and therefore no longer were people interested in either monasticism or having reason serve theology. And so we find in this period that the idea of monasticism and asceticism is treated extremely negatively, because the interest in the world has now been awakened.”

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Book:Orthodox Survival Course
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“There is nothing that I should more fear, nor any kind of death that might threaten me, which would not be more supportable for me than to live without you and be separated by a great distance. I would rather die or be eaten by fish in the sea or devored on land by cannibals than to consume myself in perpetual mourning and unceasing sorrow awaiting not my husband but his letters.”

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Book:Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire from Columbus to Magellan
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“Spike, rake, sponge, charge, wad, shot, wad – the gun crews worked like automatons. There was something extraordinary in the way that every man performed his motions as a part of the action. Every movement was synchronised with the next. They were a perfect machine – each one a piece of the mechanism, like the wheels of the watch in his pocket. He could think of no other example of men working together with such precision. This was man, industry and science in unison. Was this the way of the future? It was a wondrous and near-perfect thing. But it was a perfection bent on destruction.”

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Book:God's Vindictive Wrath
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“Mary Stuart and Elizabeth both aimed at toleration in an intolerant age, in the same ways that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of one and the almost mother-in-law of another English queen, labored her whole life to heal the rift between Catholic and Protestant in France. All three of these queens worked as diligently and as astutely as they might to restrain the fratricidal wars of Christian against Christian. What they had to hold up against that violent seismic shift in human sensibility was the orderly traditions of monarchy. If they did not ultimately succeed, they slowed and tempered the disorder and violence.”

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Book:When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe
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“MARY: Renaissance, not medieval. Most of the castle was built during the sixteenth century, although I believe its foundations date from the fourteenth. CATHERINE: And our readers will care why? MARY: You may not care for accuracy, but I do—and Carmilla will, when she reads this book. CATHERINE: If I ever get the damn thing written, with all these interruptions!”

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Book:European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman
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“I did think about a Ph.D. in computer science, but this is a time in industry where theory and practice are coming together in amazing ways. Yes, there's money, but what really interests me is that private-sector innovation happens faster. You can get more done and on a larger scale and have more impact. With all the start-ups out there, I think this is a time like the Renaissance. Not just one person doing great work, but so many feeding off one another. If you lived then, wouldn't you go out and paint?”

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Book:The Cookbook Collector
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“The horse’s hooves crashed out on the stone floor, echoing in the arched entrance. Ahead, the nave stretched, vast, empty, bathed in colour; the winter sun streaming through stained glass between great arches. The horse snorted, its measured steps ringing out on the flagstones and tombs.”

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Book:Desecration: Winchester 1642
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“The gun stood on its platform, staring out over the breastwork of earth and timber, out across the steep valley to the hill beyond; a flat-topped hill, a great field of wheat laid over it, ripening and shimmering in the late afternoon sun; a cornfield filled with an army, a Cornish army, a superstitious, idolatrous army; an army of half-wild, barbarous heathens; a cornfield and an army to be cut down; a sacrifice to be reaped. 'For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

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Book:The Keys of Hell and Death
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“Grenville's line of Cornishmen swayed and lurched, a low growl running through the ranks like a storm far out at sea, the boulders grinding as the waves built. And then it burst, men yelling, shaking their weapons in the air, the pikes clashing, thumping the ground, shouting, demanding, exclaiming, 'Kernow vedn keskerras!' Cornwall will march!”

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Book:The Keys of Hell and Death
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