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
“Then I realized I just wanted you around. My days were better when they involved you. I enjoyed your thoughts. It was thrilling to see you discover magic. You had a mad hopefulness about sorcery that I have not felt in almost a decade. I started finding excuses to take you away, not because you needed my teaching but because, because I wanted to see you. I looked forward to our meetings and—like that, Vhalla—your opinion mattered to the crown prince of the Empire. You mattered for who you were, not for your magic and what some dusty texts say Windwalkers may or may not be able to do.”
― Elise Kova, quote from Air Awakens
“For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.”
― Matt Haig, quote from Reasons to Stay Alive
“It was Voltaire who said that ‘in a government, you need both shepherds and butchers.’ The problem in France was that the butchers kept killing the shepherds, while the sheep turned cannibal.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from 1000 Years of Annoying the French
“A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. And to love someone without measure, explode with passion... A few times when we are children, maybe, for those of us who are allowed to be... But after that? How many breaths are we allowed to take beyond the confines of ourselves? How many pure emotions make us cheer out loud without a sense of shame? How many chances do we get to be blessed by amnesia? All passion is childish, it's banal and naive, it's nothing we learn, it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us... Overturns us... It bears us away in a flood... All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe. That is the reason why passion is worth something. Not for what it gives us, but for what it demands that we risk - our dignity, the puzzlement of others in their condescending shaking heads...”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from Britt-Marie Was Here
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