Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification Roger Scruton More Quotes by Roger Scruton More Quotes From Roger Scruton The best evidence of a mind is when you change it Roger Scruton evidencemind Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world Roger Scruton addressesbordersworld The sexual parts are not only vivid examples of the body's dominion; they are also apertures whose damp emissions and ammoniac smells testify to the mysterious putrefaction of the body. Roger Scruton smellexamplesex Sometimes the intention is to shock us. But what is shocking first time around is boring and vacuous when repeated. Roger Scruton boringsometimesfirsts Cognitive states of mind are seldom addictive, since they depend upon exploration of the world, and the individual encounter with the individual object, whose appeal is outside the subject's control. Addiction arises when the subject has full control over a pleasure and can ponder it at will. It is primarily a matter of sensory pleasure, and involves a kind of short-circuiting of the pleasure network. Addiction is characterized by a loss of the emotional dynamic that would otherwise govern an outward-directed, cognitively creative life. Roger Scruton addictionemotionalloss Fantasy consists in a morbid fascination with unrealities, which secretly transforms itself into a desire to make them real. Imagination is a form of intellectual control, which presents us with the image of unrealities in order that we should understand and feel distanced from them. In imagination we dominate; in fantasy, we are dominated. Roger Scruton realimaginationorder The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage. Roger Scruton modern-youthadultsculture Beauty matters. It is not just a subjective thing but a universal need of human beings. If we ignore this need we find ourselves in a spiritual desert. Roger Scruton desertspiritualneeds Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge; and the pleasure depends on the knowledge. Roger Scruton objectspleasurewine Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity - the habit of saying "good morning" to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve. Roger Scruton inspirationexercisemorning The music takes over the words and makes them speak to me in another language. Roger Scruton languagespeak Were we to aim in every case at the kind of supreme beauty exemplified by Sta Maria della Salute, we should end with aesthetic overload. The clamorous masterpieces, jostling for attention side by side, would lose their distinctiveness, and the beauty of each of them would be at war with the beauty of the rest. Roger Scruton would-beattentionwar Sanctions make a substantial contribution to power based on privation, and they have never hurt a single despot in the whole history of their use. Roger Scruton sanctionsusehurt [Burke] emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or their modernist equivalents, are actually forms of militant irrationality. Roger Scruton fraternitylibertyform Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life. Roger Scruton everydaytwoart States are more like people than they are like anything else: they exist by purpose, reason, suffering, and joy. And peace between states is also like peace between people. It involves the willing renunciation of purpose, in the mutual desire not to do, but to be. Roger Scruton diversityjoypeople Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves. Roger Scruton sellingtodayart Music exists when rhythmic, melodic or harmonic order is deliberately created, and consciously listened to, and it is only language-using, self-conscious creatures ... who are capable of organizing sounds in this way, either when uttering them or when perceiving them. We can hear music in the song of the nightingale, but it is music that no nightingale has heard. Roger Scruton musicselfsong Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement. Roger Scruton judgementfeelingsheart The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition. Roger Scruton wallculturefirsts
