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
Ends
Lose
Overload
Every
Rest
Salute
Distinctiveness
Kind
Side
Masterpiece
Jostling
Would
Loses
Aesthetic
Clamorous
Sides
Aim
Della
Beauty
Supreme
Exemplified
Attention
Case
Maria
War
Cases
Masterpieces

More quotes by Roger Scruton

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In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.
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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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Science proposes something and then does everything it can to disprove it. Religion is not like that. It proposes something and does everything it can to keep it from being disproved.
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When many people individually get what they want, the result may be something they collectively dislike.
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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 attacks on the old ways of doing things on word in particular came into currency. That word was kitsch. Once introduced, the word stuck. Whatever you do, it musn't be kitsch. This became the first precept of the modernist artist in every medium.
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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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If you consider only utility, the things you build will soon be useless... nobody wants to be in it.
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The best evidence of a mind is when you change it
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Music addresses us from beyond the borders of the natural world
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Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past
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Freedom can reside only in a point of view, a way of looking upon the system of necessity.Surely this is the one freedom that we may attain to: not to be released from physical reality, but to understand reality and ourselves as part of it, and so be reconciled to what we are.
Roger Scruton
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Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the world as a home, and in doing so we both amplify our joys and find consolation for our sorrows.
Roger Scruton
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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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In our democratic culture people often think it is threatening to judge another person's taste. Some are even offended by the suggestion that there is a difference between good and bad taste, or that it matters what you look at or read or listen to.
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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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This knowing what to do... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who knows what to do is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.
Roger Scruton
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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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The abstract, unreal freedom of the liberal intellect was really nothing more than childish disobedience, amplified into anarchy.
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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.
Roger Scruton