Quote

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

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Roger Scruton
Age: 75 †
Born: 1944
Born: February 27
Died: 2020
Died: January 12
Aesthetician
Composer
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Politician
University Teacher
Writer
Roger Vernon Scruton
Professor Sir Roger Vernon Scruton
War
Cases
Masterpieces
Ends
Lose
Overload
Every
Rest
Salute
Distinctiveness
Kind
Side
Masterpiece
Jostling
Would
Loses
Aesthetic
Clamorous
Sides
Aim
Della
Beauty
Supreme
Exemplified
Attention
Case
Maria

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Art has the ability to redeem life by finding beauty even in the worst aspect of things.
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A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable
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The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
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Something of the child's pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.
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Wine is not just an object of pleasure, but an object of knowledge and the pleasure depends on the knowledge.
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Modernist buildings exclude dialogue, and the void that they create around themselves is not a public space but a desertification
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The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.
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A philosopher who says, 'There are no truths, only interpretations,' risks the retort: 'Is that true, or only an interpretation?'
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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.
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Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence.
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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.
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The problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.
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Conservatives resonate to Burke's view of society, as a partnership between the living, the unborn and the dead.
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In the absence of organized religion, the only vehicle for redemption is art - not just the fragmentary arts of painting or music or poetry, but the kind of art that creates a whole world in itself and in that world we see ourselves reflected and see our religious life perfected.
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Private property is one of the best institutions which has ever evolved, to protect us from the bullying of others.
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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.
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If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless... nobody wants to be in it.
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Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.
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In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.
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The art establishment has turned away from the old curriculum which puts beauty and craft at the top of the agenda.
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