176 pages
Rating: (634 votes)
“Every man-made thing, be it a chair, a text, or a school, is thought made substance. It is the expression of someone's, or some groups, ideas and beliefs. The two-hundred year old double hung, six light sash window in the wall opposite my desk, out of which I am looking at this moment embodies ideas about houses and how we should live in them, tools, technologies, standards of craftsmanship, nature and much else. It is a material manifestation of the collective consciousness of its time and place channeled through the individuals who commissioned and made it".”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“When I look at a piece of furniture from across a room, I see form, style, scale, context, and intended use. As I approach it, I distinguish material, joinery, and proportions. When I get close enough to touch it, I take in details such as hardware, textures, finish, edge treatments, wood grain, quality, and comfort.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“I was becoming aware that a good life was not some Shangri-La waiting to be stumbled upon. One constructed it from the materials at hand.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“Only as I approached adulthood did I realize that life is a process of continual becoming.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“there are three different contexts in which one can participate in a creative field. For shorthand, I call them the first-person, second-person, and third-person voices. You”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“skilled manual work offered spiritual rewards to which academic institutions and my parent’s social milieu were oblivious.”
― quote from Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman
“Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Did they know why they knew? Not at all. But the Knew!”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
“Fiction is not fact, but fiction is fact selected and understood, fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose.”
― Thomas Wolfe, quote from Look Homeward, Angel
“Nobody understands how hard it is, being a captain.”
― Dave Barry, quote from Peter and the Starcatchers
“The progress of Sybilla though a market was the progress of worker bee through a bower of intently propagating blossoms. Everything stuck. From the toy stall she bought two ivory dolls, a hen whistle, a rattle and a charming set of miniature bells for a child’s skirts: all were heroically received and borne by Tom, henceforth marked by a faint, distracted jingling. From the spice booth, set with delicious traps for the fat purse, she took cinnamon, figs, cumin seed and saffron, ginger, flower of gillyflower and crocus and—an afterthought—some brazil for dyeing her new wool. These were distributed between Christian and Tom. They listened to a balladmonger, paid him for all the verses of “When Tay’s Bank,” and bought a lengthy scroll containing a brand-new ballad which Tom Erskine read briefly and then discreetly lost. “No matter,” said the Dowager cheerfully, when told. “Dangerous quantity, music. Because it spouts sweet venom in their ears and makes their minds all effeminate, you know. We can’t have that.” He was never very sure whether she was laughing at him, but rather thought not. They pursued their course purposefully, and the Dowager bought a new set of playing cards, some thread, a boxful of ox feet, a quantity of silver lace and a pair of scissors. She was dissuaded from buying a channel stone, which Tom, no curling enthusiast, refused utterly to carry, and got a toothpick in its case instead. They watched acrobats, invested sixpence for an unconvincing mermaid and finally stumbled, flattened and hot, into a tavern, where Tom forcibly commandeered a private space for the two women and brought them refreshments. “Dear, dear,” said Lady Culter, seating herself among the mute sea of her parcels, like Arion among his fishes. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten which are the squashy ones. Never mind. If we spread them out, they can’t take much hurt, I should think. Unless the ox feet … Oh. What a pity, Tom. But I’m sure it will clean off.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Game of Kings
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Through the DarkBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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