“There exists a physiological contradiction in the so-called genius: on the one hand he is informed with much wild agitation, and on the other with much purpose in this agitation. As a consequence of this spectacle he is often unhappy, and when he is at his best, he creates because he forgets that he is doing something fantastic and irrational with the highest degree of purpose.”
—Daybreak, §263 (edited excerpt).
—Daybreak, §263 (edited excerpt).
"Noia is plainly an evil: to suffer it is to suffer utter unhappiness. So what is noia? Not a specific sorrow or pain (noia, the idea and nature of it, excludes the presence of any particular sorrow or pain) but simply ordinary life fully felt, lived in, known; it's everywhere, it saturates an individual. Life thus is an affliction; and not living, or being less alive (by living a shorter or less intense life) is a reprieve, or a least a lesser affliction—absolutely preferable, that is, to life."
- Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (1817-1832)
- Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (1817-1832)
“They remained silent, while the bronze tolling passed over their heads so powerfully that they seemed to hear it in the very roots of their hair like a quiver of their flesh.”
― Gabriele D'Annunzio, The Flame
― Gabriele D'Annunzio, The Flame
“Do you not realize that if you demand art when you are sick you make sick the artists?”
—Daybreak, §269 (excerpt).
—Daybreak, §269 (excerpt).
Style has no formula, but it has a secret key. It is the extension of your personality. The summation of this indefinable net of your feeling, knowledge and experience.
- Ernst Haas
- Ernst Haas