There is generosity in giving, but gentleness in receiving. Freya Stark More Quotes by Freya Stark More Quotes From Freya Stark ... except in the eyes of a few fanatics (untrustworthy as all lovers) an unmitigated expanse of water is dull even when blue: not in a small boat, where you are part of the winds and currents and tides and are allowed to hold the tiller now and then; but from those decks which the shipping companies with subconscious insight try to make as suburban as possible so that the impact of the monster outside may be lessened, and where the unrecognized boredom is so deep that a wispy smear of smoke on the horizon will queue up a crowd as if for a Valkyrie passing. Freya Stark impact eye blue Generalizations, one is told, are dangerous. So is life, for that matter, and it is built up on generalization - from the earliest effort of the adventurer who dared to eat a second berry because the first had not killed him. Freya Stark berries effort matter The Persian's mind, like his illuminated manuscripts, does not deal in perspective: two thousand years, if he happens to know anything about them, are as exciting as the day before yesterday. Freya Stark yesterday two years A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood. Freya Stark clouds lying art Accuracy is the basis of style. Words dress our thoughts and should fit; and should fit not only in their utterances, but in their implications, their sequences, and their silences, just as in architecture the empty spaces are as important as those that are filled. Freya Stark style space silence The camel is an ugly animal, seen from above. Its shoulders slope formless like a sack, its silly little ears and fluff of bleached curls behind them have a respectable, boarding-house look, like some faded neatness that dresses for propriety but never dressed for love. Freya Stark house silly animal The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own traveling brotherhood. Freya Stark change life art The artist's business is to take sorrow when it comes. The depth and capacity of his reception is the measure of his art; and when he turns his back on his own suffering, he denies the very laws of his being and closes the door on everything that can ever make him great. Freya Stark law doors art every word calls up far more of a picture than its actual meaning is supposed to do, and the writer has to deal with all these silent associations as well as with the uttered significance. Freya Stark significance silent association Love of learning is a pleasant and universal bond since it deals with what one is and not what one has. Freya Stark love-of-learning pleasant deals Love, like broken porcelain, should be wept over and buried, for nothing but a miracle will resuscitate it: but who in this world has not for some wild moments thought to recall the irrecoverable with words? Freya Stark miracle broken world the main necessity on both sides of a revolution is kindness, which makes possible the most surprising things. To treat one's neighbor as oneself is the fundamental maxim for revolution. Freya Stark revolution fundamentals kindness I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people's virtues. Freya Stark anvils virtue people All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand-any dog, child or horse would recognize the kindness of it. Freya Stark horse dog children ... the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. Freya Stark roots love-is sex monotony is not to be worshipped as a virtue; nor the marriage bed treated as a coffin for security rather than a couch from which to rise refreshed. Freya Stark coffins boredom bed Once divested of missionary virus, the cult of our gods gives no offence. It would be a peaceful age if this were recognized, and religion, Christian, communist or any other, were to rely on practice and not on conversion for her growth. Freya Stark practice christian giving advertisement ... has brought our disregard for truth into the open without even a figleaf to cover it. Freya Stark advertisements disregard advertising ... it is a matter of civilizing everyone or not being civilized at all: the decay has always come from a partial civilization. Freya Stark decay matter civilization I can't get over the exciting beauty of New York - the pencil buildings so high and far that the blueness of the sky floats about them; the feeling that one's taxis, and shopping, all go on in the deep canyon-beds of natural erosions rather than in the excrescences of human builders. Freya Stark erosion new-york sky
