The Saunterer

Margaret Mead’s measure of success

    What is so great about fellow human beings that would make them the object of a measure of success? By Margaret Mead’s measure, one could be successful while wrecking the lives of all other creatures, even trashing Earth itself. Here is what she said:

I must admit that I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings. (Quoted from the Nov. 1978 issue of Redbook magazine.)

    For a brief biography of Margaret Mead, click here.

Charles Sheeler on the difference between photography and painting

    Charles Sheeler was both. He put the difference this way:
Photography is nature seen from the eyes outward, painting from the eyes inward. Photography records inalterably the single image while painting records a plurality of images willfully directed by the artist. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 246.)

    For a sample of Charles Sheeler’s paintings and photographs, click here. For a brief biography of him, click here.

John Ruskin on the sky

    John Ruskin speaks to the reason for sky watching:

THE SKY is for all; bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good, for human nature’s daily food;” it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. (Quoted from page 42 of The True and the Beautiful in Nature, Art, Morals, and Religion, by John Ruskin. 1859. New York: Wiley & Halsted.)

    For a brief biography of John Ruskin, click here.

Henry Mackenzie on the place of our delicacies

    As a demonstration that delicacies are of the mind and not of nature, Henry Mackenzie offered this:

Our delicacies are fantastic; they are not in nature! that beggar walks over the sharpest of these stones barefooted, whilst I have lost the most delightful dream in the world from the smallest of them happening to get into my shoe.

    For a brief biography of Henry Mackenzie, click here.

Tom F. Peters on insuring against risk

    The less time you are exposed to harm, the lower your risk. The lower the risk, the smaller the cost of insuring against it. The same principle is partly the reason for building the Suez Canal. Hear Tom F. Peters, Swiss-educated historian of technology:

No development runs rigidly in a single direction. The great projects of the age [the 19th century] were more risky than we now perceive them to have been. An example is the interdependence between profit, insurance, and iron construction in shipbuilding, which shows how complex the considerations were that faced the Suez Canal’s promoters and potential users. The quicker the transportation was, the shorter the trips would be. This made insurance risks lower, because the less time a ship spent at sea, the smaller the danger of shipwreck, piracy, or fire. One of the main arguments in support of the canal was therefore that it would save about 2 percent of a standard insurance premium on traffic to the Orient. Since profit margins lay around 12 percent at the time, even slight savings on insurance premiums made a difference, especially since a shorter trip also meant that the merchant could reinvest profits more promptly. Insurance considerations also led merchants to choose iron as an incombustible structural material. (Quoted from page 19 of Building the Nineteenth Century, by Tom F. Peters. 1996. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.)

Lord Byron on how to develop self-confidence

    Lord Byron once advised a young writer:   

The first thing a young writer must expect, and yet can least of all suffer, is criticism. I did not bear it – a few years, and many changes have since passed over my head, and my reflections on that subject are attended with regret. I find, on dispassionate comparison, my own revenge more than the provocation warranted. It is true, I was very young, - that might be an excuse to those I attacked - but to me it is none. The best reply to all objections is to write better, and if your enemies will not then do you justice, the world will. On the other hand, you should not be discouraged; to be opposed is not to be vanquished, though a timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound. There is a saying of Dr. Johnson’s, which it is as well to remember, that “no man was ever written down except by himself.” I hope you will meet with as few obstacles as yourself can desire; but if you should, you will find that they are to be stepped over; to kick them down is the first resolve of a young and fiery spirit, a pleasant thing enough at the time, but not so afterwards. . . . (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 296.)

    For a brief biography of Lord Byron, click here.

Shakespeare on young love’s lunacy

    The older we get, the more we grasp the truth of Shakespeare’s remark:

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. (from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Act III. Scene II.)

    For a brief biography of William Shakespeare, click here.

Alphonse Karr on what the artist does

  The scientist uncovers; the artist discovers. If Newton and Einstein had not existed, the laws in their names would have been uncovered by others. If Shakespeare and Picasso had not existed, the works in their names would not ever have been discovered. Hear Alphonse Karr:

You are not an author, as you are not an artist, unless from your own heart you add to the treasures of art something which would not have existed if you had not been born. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 222.)

    For a brief biography of Alphonse Karr, click here.

Henry Miller on what art is for

    Somewhere in the human genome are genes that make us create and appreciate art. For, all cultures early in their histories began creating art: so, art is not learned but inevitable. But what is art for? Henry Miller believed this:

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. . . . Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself. (Quoted from The Henry Miller Reader, by Henry Miller. New Directions Publishing. 1969. p. 246.)

    For a brief biography of Henry Miller, click here.

William Butler Yeats on the value of art

    Of art’s various values, William Butler Yeats put this as one of them:

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract thing, from all that is of the brain only, from all that is not a fountain jetting from the entire hopes, memories, and sensations of the body. (Quoted from Yeats and the Visual Arts, by Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux. 2003. Syracuse University Press. p. 160.)

    For a brief biography of William Butler Yeats, click here.