Beauty always takes place in the particular, and if there are no particulars, the chances of seeing it go down
Elaine ScarryRead
How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The way we navigate life is influenced by our appreciation of beauty.
This quote suggests that our daily experiences and the choices we make are subtly guided by the beautiful things we encounter in the world. The 'endless small adjustments of balance' implies that life is a continual process of adapting, and the presence of beauty can serve as a guiding force that impacts our emotional and psychological wellbeing.
Themes
BeautyBalancePerceptionLifeExperience
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational talk on finding inspiration in everyday life.
More from Elaine Scarry
All quotes βWhen we come upon beautiful things they act like small tears in the surface of the world that pull us through to some vaster space.
Elaine ScarryRead
Permitted to inhabit neither the realm of the ideal nor the realm of the real, to be neither aspiration nor companion, beauty comes to us like a fugitive bird unable to fly, unable to land.
Elaine ScarryRead
This willingness continually to revise one's own location in order to place oneself in the path of beauty is the basic impulse underlying education. One submits oneself to other minds (teachers) in order to increase the chance that one will be looking in the right direction when a comet makes its sweep through a certain patch of sky.
Elaine ScarryRead
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