The Antoninos

"Como devemos reagir aos dois projectos regra geral inconciliáveis em nome da amizade, um projecto para assegurar o afecto e um projecto para nos exprimirmos com sinceridade?
[...]
Proust levou o projecto conjunto a um ponto de ruptura, criando uma abordagem distinta à amizade segundo a qual a procura de afecto e a procura da verdade eram fundamentalmente e não ocasionalmente incompatíveis".

Alian de Botton in Como Proust pode mudar a sua vida

Eu vi, na altura.

Dellamorte Dellamore em http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cemetery_Man

"A verdade é que à medida que envelhecemos matamos as pessoas que nos amam com as preocupações que lhes damos, com o carinho ansioso que lhes inspiramos e que provocamos constantemente".

Marcel Proust

Queremos autorização para gozar livremente hoje, "porque não sabemos o dia de amanhã e só se vive uma vez"; enche-nos o receio de não viver uma vida plena;

depois descobre-se que, por não termos preparado essa vida acautelando e investindo, refreando de alguma forma egoísmos, a possibilidade receada se tornou inevitabilidade.

Ou talvez nessa altura seja tarde demais para sequer reconhecer essa relação; e bastar-nos-emos em culpar os outros sem nos reconhecermos no que fomos.

"Dear Sirs,

I would like to have a family pass cancelled."

A voz passiva não será a forma mais adequada, no sentido de honesta;

ao que se acumula um problema de tempo, não o verbal, simplesmente o que se passou no entretanto;

mas está feito, ou desfeito, pelo menos o cartão.

O homem é a medida de todas as coisas.

Excepto, talvez, quando é de meias-medidas.

"A representative man. Jerry [Maguire] is a full-blooded avatar of the Protestant-Emersonian tradition that continues to flourish, often unrecognized, in American civic culture, and in its popular art as well.

He believes [...] that it is possible for apparently discrepant values and identities to be perfectly congruent. Decency, wealth, love, fame: these are not contradictory but rather mutually reinforcing expressions of that secular grace known as happiness. We are entitled to pursue it [...]

The way he learns is through adversity, a habit that makes him an illustration not only of management-philosophy boilerplate, but also of the doctrine of the fortunate fall, whereby sin is understood as beneficial because it makes redemption possible".


A.O. Scott in International Herald Tribune, 5-6 Dec 2009

«elephant shoe» is a phrase uttered by Scottish youth afraid of saying, «I love you», a way of implying the sentiment while deflecting its articulation.

do Lei seca, do Allmusic

[também se poderia dizer, talvez com mais verdade: a way of deflecting the sentiment while implying its articulation]

"...beauty [...] as a form of self-expression, or as a form of self-denial [...] as one of the instruments in our consensus-building strategies, one of the values through which we construct and belong to a shared and mutually consoling world. In short, it is part of building a home.
[...]
...in 1961, Jane Jacobs argued that cities should develop spontaneously and organically, so as to enshrine in their contours the unintended results of the consensual transactions between their residents. [...] As much as the home, cities depend upon good manners; and good manners require the modest accommodation to neighbors rather than the arrogant assertion of apartness. The architects who win the big commissions today [...] design buildings [...] which stand apart from their surroundings, islands of Ego in a sea of Us.
[...]
The buildings that go up in our neighborhood matter to us in just the way that our neighbors matter. They demand our attention, and shape our lives. [...] every building [...] should be a fitting member of a community of neighbors. [...] Architecture is not like poetry, music, or painting [...] It survives regardless of its aesthetic merit, and is only rarely the expression of creative genius.
[...]
The failure of modernism, in my view, lies not in the fact that it has produced no great or beautiful buildings—the Chapel at Ronchamp, and the houses of Frank Lloyd Wright abundantly prove the opposite. It lies in the absence of any reliable patterns or types, which can be used in awkward or novel situations so as to spontaneously harmonize with the existing urban decor, and so as to retain the essence of the street as a common home.
[...]
People need beauty. They need the sense of being in communication with other souls. In so many areas of modern life [...] beauty is being displaced by raucous and attention-grabbing clichés [...] by the loud and insolent gestures of people who want to seize our attention but to give nothing in return for it".

Roger Scruton in The American

"When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture meets a culture that is anchored, confident and strengthened by common doctrines, it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter".

Christopher Caldwell on Muslim integration, Spiegel online

Afinal a palavra existe mesmo...

http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/default.aspx?pal=economicismo

"...a mental state first described in the 1970s by the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “flow.”

This, he argued, was the mental state experienced by a top athlete executing a perfect sequence of manoeuvres or a musician losing themselves in performance; a kind of “optimal experience” gained from reacting to constant, shifting stimuli".