At pains to define liberty, that most resolute of indefinables, our minds fall back on spatial images; on birds, sailboats, and mountains; the untethered balloon, the blue sky, the nude figure. Robert Grudin More Quotes by Robert Grudin More Quotes From Robert Grudin True teachers not only impart knowledge and method but awaken the love of learning by their own reflected love. Robert Grudin learning teacher love We struggle with, agonize over and bluster heroically about the great questions of life when the answers to most of these lie hidden in our attitude toward the thousand minor details of each day. Robert Grudin struggle attitude lying If the estimated age of the cosmos were shortened to seventy-two years, a human life would take about ten seconds. But look at time the other way. Each day is a minor eternity of over 86,000 seconds. During each second, the number of distinct molecular functions going on within the human body is comparable to the number of seconds in the estimated age of the cosmos. A few seconds are long enough for a revolutionary idea, a startling communication, a baby's conception, a wounding insult, a sudden death. Depending on how we think of them, our lives can be infinitely long or infinitely short. Robert Grudin communication baby thinking The happy individual is able to renew daily and with full consciousness all the basic expressions of human identity: work, love, communication, play, and rest. Robert Grudin communication expression life All great experience has a guarded entrance and a windowless facade. Robert Grudin entrances great-experiences mystery We pamper the present like a spoiled child, obeying its superficial demands but ignoring its real needs. Robert Grudin real time children Excellence of mind itself, rightly conceived, is expertise in beauty; creativity is wise love. Robert Grudin creativity wise love Plans made swiftly and intuitively are likely to have flaws. Plans made carefully and comprehensively are sure to. Robert Grudin planning flaws made We are wistful about the golden days of the past and dream of a distant future unclouded by necessity. But I suspect that if our inner souls were asked what in life they really missed, the answer would be primal danger and stress. Robert Grudin stress dream past Free men and women... can think across time, viewing their own lives, inclusive of past, present, and future, as architectural wholes, static in mental space. They can therefore see, as others cannot, the cracks and buttresses of repeated action, the points of stress, the established framework. They are not perfect; but they are less imperfect than we by a full dimension of being. Robert Grudin future stress life That morning I experienced vividly, if almost subliminally, the reality of change itself: how it fools our sentinels and undermines our defenses, how careful we are to look for it in the wrong places, how it does not reveal itself until it is beyond redress, how vainly we search for it around us and find too late that is has occurred within us. Robert Grudin change morning life Psychologically time is seldom homogenous but rather is as full of shapes as space. Robert Grudin shapes space time The extent to which we live from day to day, from week to week, intent on details and oblivious to larger presences, is a gauge of our impoverishment in time. Robert Grudin gauges details time Like students of art who walk around a great statue, seeing parts and aspects of it from each position, but never the whole, we must walk mentally around time, using a variety of approaches, a pandemonium of metaphor. Robert Grudin students time art The mind which can totally and inanely forget its work and obligations is often also the mind which can, at the proper time, give them the fullest attention. Robert Grudin mind attention giving We commonly think of freedom as the ability to define alternatives and choose between them. The creative mind exceeds this liberty in being able to redefine itself and reality at large, generating whole new sets of alternatives. Robert Grudin creativity freedom reality Truth is rhythmical: if it implies stasis, it is platitude. Truth is syncopated: if it supplies all the terms, there is one term too many. Truth is barbed: if it comforts, it lies. Truth is an armed dancer. Robert Grudin truth lying reality Every home should have a room, or at least a nook with two chairs, where it is a sin punishable by immediate expulsion to speak of money, business, politics or the state of one's teeth. Robert Grudin should-have home two Creativity is dangerous. We cannot open ourselves to new insights without endangering the security of our prior assumptions. We cannot propose new ideas without risking disapproval and rejection. Robert Grudin rejection creativity ideas Individuals we consider happy commonly seem complete in the present and we see them constantly in their wholeness: attentive, cheerful, open rather than closed to events, integral in the moment rather than distended across time by regret or anxiety. Robert Grudin cheerful anxiety regret
