The Saunterer

Richard Griffiths on self-evaluating one’s looks and one’s brains

    Silly, isn’t it, how most people put themselves low on the scale of looks, high on the scale of brains? About trying to avoid being photographed, actor Richard Griffiths says:

    'It's a vanity thing. I'm vain enough not to want to appear in stills.' He quotes an old Jewish proverb: everybody hates the way they look, but no one complains about their brains. 'And that's true. I've always hated the way I looked, and I've never complained about my brains.'

    (Quoted from The Observer, October 8, 2005, issue.)
    For a brief biography of Richard Griffiths, click here. For images of or relating to Richard Griffiths, click here.

Amelia Earhart advised women to compete

    How can there be equality of the sexes if women shy from competing? As Amelia Earhart emphasized:

    Now and then women should do for themselves what men have already done -- occasionally what men have not done -- thereby establishing themselves as persons, and perhaps encouraging other women toward greater independence of thought and action.

    (Quoted from page 202 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Amelia Earhart, click here. For images of or relating to Amelia Earhart, click here.

Ethan Brown on why he stopped eating meat

    Ethan Brown says this about his process of becoming a vegan:

    When I was growing up, my dad taught at the University of Maryland (he founded the School of Public Policy there). In has ‘spare’ time he bought a farm in beautiful Western Maryland and started a large Holstein dairy business. His passion for agriculture, land, and the outdoors shaped much of my early life and introduced me to farm animals. Hanging around them, I couldn’t help but notice that while there were differences in appearance, personality, and intelligence between say a calf and my beloved dogs, none were significant enough for me to justify moral consideration to one and deny it to the other.
    As I got older, I never was able to find a rational answer to the question “which do you cut and which do you cuddle?” Yet, as with lots of folks, my ability to integrate this belief into my daily behavior was at first limited and I continued to fish, eat meat, and wear leather. I think my evolution to become vegan was a process of retiring each inconsistency as my discomfort spoke to me loudly enough.

    Ethan Brown is the founder of Beyond Meat, a company making a plant-based product that many find is so similar in texture and taste to chicken that the difference is impossible to tell. We quote him from page 12 of Compassionate Action, winter issue, 2012, published by the organization Compassion Over Killing.

    For a brief biography of Ethan Brown and Beyond Meat’s website, click here. For Compassion Over Killing’s website, click here.

Archibald MacLeish on artists

    Artists and the world aren’t bosom buddies, and Archibald MacLeish explains why:

    Artists don’t see the world the way it wants to be seen and the world reciprocates.

    (Comment of Archibald MacLeish marking the fiftieth anniversary of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, The New York Times, February 16, 1964.)
    For a brief biography of Archibald MacLeish, click here. For images of or relating to Archibald MacLeish, click here.

Mary Midgley on animals and why they matter

    We believe in Mary Midgley’s heart, a heart respecting the rights of animals, its priority of treating them with kindness:

    They too are persons, not things, entitled to respect because they exist as ends in themselves, not just as objects for us to look at or as means to any of our ends.

    (Quoted from page 94 of Animals and Why They Matter, by Mary Midgley. University of Georgia Press, 1998.)
    For a brief biography of Mary Midgley, click here. For images of or relating to Mary Midgley, click here.

Henry James on one’s shell and one’s self

    Henry James in his Portrait of a Lady has Madame Merle say:

    When you’ve lived as long as I you’ll see that every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There’s no such thing as an isolated man or woman: we’re each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our “self”? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us –- and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I’ve a great respect for things! One’s self –- for other people –- is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s furniture, one’s garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps –- these things are all expressive!

    (Quoted from page 65 of The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880 -- 1940, by Miles Orvell. The University of North Carolina Press, 1989.)
    For a brief biography of Henry James, click here. For images of or relating to Henry James, click here.
    For a brief biography of Miles Orvell, click here. For images of or relating to Miles Orvell, click here.

L. S. Lowry on artists

    Who is an artist? Perhaps you. L. S. Lowry defined it in terms of happiness:

    The difference between an artist and everyone else is that everyone else is only happy when they stop working, an artist is only happy when he is working.

    (Quoted from page 287 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001)
    For a brief biography of L. S. Lowry, click here. For images of or relating to L. S. Lowry, click here.

Martina Navratilova on being gay

    What a sane and wise way Martina Navratilova uses in putting it:

    I have never felt ashamed of being gay, even when people have tried hard to make me feel that way. I know how I feel isn’t wrong. There can be nothing wrong with loving another human being, regardless of their gender. What is wrong is to be prejudiced against those you don’t understand or who don’t feel exactly like you. Occasionally, someone will throw the Bible at me and I say, “Are you saying that God had us evolve in every way over the last two thousand years but the Bible has not?” I ask them to look at the Bible. It justified human slavery, genocide, the sacrifice of animals. We’ve evolved beyond those things! The Bible has evolved in those things, why not in human sexuality? Then they might say, “Well, it’s not normal.” I think of Naomi Judd’s words. She said, “Normal? Normal is just a cycle in a washing machine.” You can have a normal temperature, a normal water level, but what is a normal human being when we are all so full of emotion, love, and sexuality?

    (Quoted from page 171 of One Can Make a Difference: How Simple Actions Can Change the World, edited by Ingrid E. Newkirk. Adams Media, 2008.)
    For information and news of Martina Navratilova, click here. For images of or relating to Martina Navratilova, click here.
    For a brief biography of Ingrid E. Newkirk, click here. For images of or relating to Ingrid E. Newkirk, click here.

Charles Darwin on how imagination holds us more strongly than reason

    Even in situations of safety, imagination often wins over reason: witness the popularity of religion and myth. But faced with danger, imagination often forcefully exerts itself, sending reason scurrying. Anyone who has failed to reason away stage fright will get Charles Darwin’s point:

    But our reason telling us that there is no danger does not suffice. I may mention a trifling fact, illustrating this point, and which at the time amused me. I put my face close to the thick glass plate in front of a puff-adder in the Zoological Gardens, with the firm determination of not starting back if the snake struck at me; but, as soon as the blow was struck, my resolution went for nothing, and I jumped a yard or two backwards with astonishing rapidity. My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced.

    (Quoted from page 77 of The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent, by Lynne A. Isbell. Harvard University Press, 2009. Original source: page 38 of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, by Charles Darwin, 1872.)
    For a brief biography of Charles Darwin, click here. For images of or relating to Charles Darwin, click here.
    For a brief biography of Lynne A. Isbell, click here. For images of or relating to Lynne A. Isbell, click here.

Milford Zornes on putting quality into art

    The first stage of a painting’s brushwork flies quick and direct. Then the arrow-like reflexes go powerless, and so starts the long, long labyrinth stage, groping for the subtle brushstrokes that will inflate the painting with quality. Painter Milford Zornes remarked:

    I have spent many years sitting on a hill some place, trying to make a watercolor work.

    (Quoted from page 165 of American Scene Painting: California 1930s and 1940s. Edited by Ruth Lilly Westphal and Janet Blake Dominik. Westphal Publishing, 1991.)
    For a brief biography of Milford Zornes, click here. For images of some of Milford Zornes' paintings, click here.
    For a bit about Ruth Lilly Westphal, click here.