In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Camille PagliaRead
There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation alter nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.
Interpretation
Nature has a powerful and unchanging presence, unaffected by human actions.
In this quote, Camille Paglia reflects on the resilience and dominance of nature, suggesting that human actions, even destructive ones like nuclear war, are insignificant in the grand scheme of the natural world. She emphasizes that nature will inevitably recover and continue its processes, regardless of our interventions. The quote serves as a reminder of our place within the larger ecosystem and the enduring strength of nature itself.
In practice
In a speech about environmental preservation, one could quote this to emphasize the importance of respecting nature.
In an era ruled by materialism and unstable geopolitics, art must be restored to the center of public education.
Every month, it is woman's fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.
Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.
The male orientation of classical Athens was inseparable from its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.
We should teach general ethics to both men and women, but sexual relationships themselves must not be policed. Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in totalitarian regimes.
Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.
The utilization of flat roofs as 'grounds' offers us a means of re-acclimatizing nature amidst the stony deserts of our great towns; for the plots from which she has been evicted to make room for buildings can be given back to her up aloft.
Cover me with soft earth, and let each handful be mixed With seeds ofjasmine, lilies, and myrtle; and when they Grow above me and thrive on my body's element they will Breathe the fragrance of my heart into space.
The moth settled onto the curtain and sat still. It was an astonishing creature, with black and white wings patterned in geometric shapes, scarlet underwings, and a fat white body with black spots running down it like a snowman's coal buttons. No human eye had looked at this moth before; no one would see its friends. So much detail goes unnoticed in the world.
...full of God's thoughts, a place of peace and safety amid the most exalted grandeur and enthusiastic action, a new song, a place of beginnings abounding in first lessons of life, mountain building, eternal, invincible, unbreakable order; with sermons in stone, storms, trees, flowers, and animals brimful with humanity.
I'm leaving my sorrows and all my memories behind to see what I find, somewhere in the shade near the sound of a sweet singing river, somewhere in the sun where the mountains make love to the sky.
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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