Quotes from parts 1 - 3 of Roger Scruton’s essay on beauty.
“There are standards of beauty which have a firm base in human nature, and we need to look for them and build them into our lives.”
“People need useless things just as much as they need useful things.”
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
William Wordsworth: The World Is Too Much with Us (1807)
“All art is useless” - Oscar Wilde
“Put usefulness first, and you will lose it. Put beauty first, and what you do will be useful forever.”
“Ornaments liberate us from the tyranny of the useful, and satisfy our need for harmony. In a strange way, they make us feel at home. They remind us that we have more than practical needs… We have spiritual and moral needs. And if those needs go unsatisfied, so do we.”
