The Saunterer

Ivor Gurney on learning to feel the beauty of all things

    We all have thoughts on beauty. How do yours compare with his?

    What the artist needs is not so much technique, as a greater appreciation of beauty so generally overlooked. Why should not the violet be considered as the chief work of God visible to us? And yet it is the bunch and the coloured vase that must make up most people’s mental idea of that lovely thought of innocence. The Artist must learn to feel the beauty of all things, and the sense of instant communion with God that such perception will bring. “To feel Eternity in an hour”. Blake knew that to attain to this height, not greater dexterity, but greater humility and beauty of thought were needed. And the composer must judge his work by this standard — that his work be born of sincere and deep emotion sufficiently controlled by the intellect to be coherent and clear. And if his thought be deep and worthy, who shall say it will not shape its proper expression?

    (Quoted from page 231 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg. Xlibris, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Ivor Gurney, click here. For images of or relating Ivor Gurney, click here.

Edmund Leach on the downside of families

    All we seem to hear about families is praise for them. Edmund Leach rebalances the view.

    Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents.

    (Edmund Leach is quoted from the November 30, 1967, radio broadcast of the BBC Reith Lectures.)
    For a brief biography of Edmund Leach, click here. For images of or relating Edmund Leach, click here.

Oscar Wilde on the tragedy of our sex

    Besides the witty way he says it, there’s some truth to it:

    All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

    (Quoted from page 41 of The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde. London: Leonard Smithers and Co., 1899.)
    For a brief biography of Oscar Wilde, click here. For images of or relating Oscar Wilde, click here.

Rochelle Shoretz on how to think about death

    Six years before Rochelle Shoretz died, when she learned she had terminal cancer, she said this:

    Of course I wish I had more time. I would love to see grandchildren, to see weddings, to be a part of these amazing things for more time, but I love life and don’t want to spend any of it mourning the loss of that which I can’t have. I’d much rather embrace that which I do.

    (Quoted from page B16 of The New York Times, June 4, 2015.)
    For a brief biography of Rochelle Shoretz, click here. For images of or relating to Rochelle Shoretz, click here.