miniZibaldone

"Art is the language of the human being. It is the language of that being, who, before being himself in the multiplicity of things or allowing himself to be absorbed by countless activities that give us the illusion of living intensely, has the capacity for wonder." Wonder, and the poetry that arises from its purpose, is for that which does not pass away. . . . Of the things of this world, only two remain, two alone: poetry and goodness, and nothing else. . . . That which is beautiful is not that what pleases today or has pleased but what should please; just as what is good is not what gives the most pleasure but what makes us better. Artist: the torrent of beauty flows through you, but you are not beauty.   Those who know how to suffer lives from vision and silence. Desire leads us to live paschally.   Beauty is mercy. —Stanislaw Grygiel

From Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh   Dear Theo, ...Do you know an American magazine called 'Harper's Monthly'? There are wonderful sketches in it, which strike me dumb with admiration, among others 'Glass Works' and 'Steel Works,' all scenes from factories; and also sketches from a Quaker town in the olden days, by Howard Pyle. I am full of new pleasure in those things, because I have a new hope of making things myself that have soul in them. I should love to make, sooner or later, after some more study, drawings for illustration. Perhaps one thing will follow from another. The point is to continue to work.... Evacuation by Pyle Letter of Introduction by Pyle Men of Iron by Pyle Perfect Christmas by Pyle Quakers by Pyle Surprised by the Hero of Seventy Fights - The Good Lord James of Douglas (Howard Pyle)

Dear Theo: the Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh by Irving Stone Paris , late October 1887 |  To Willemien van Gogh My dear little sister, Is the Bible enough for us? Nowadays I believe Jesus himself would again say to those who just sit melancholy,  it is not here, it is risen. Why seek ye the living among the dead? If the spoken or written word is to remain the light of the world, it’s our right and our duty to acknowledge that we live in an age in which it’s written in such a way, spoken in such a way that in order to find something as great and as good and as original, and just as capable of overturning the whole old society as in the past, we can safely compare it with the old upheaval by the Christians. For my part, I’m always glad that I’ve read the Bible better than many people nowadays, just because it gives me a certain peace that there have been such lofty ideas in the past. But precisely  because I think the old is good, I find the new a...

San Pietro Penitente (Guido Reni) Pieta  (Michelangelo)  

Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. [...] Of course, this is not just, or principally, a theological problem, but a problem of pastoral life, that has to foster the human person's encounter with the beauty of faith. All too often arguments fall on deaf ears because in our world too many contradictory arguments compete with one another, so much so that we are spontaneously reminded of the medieval theologians' description of reason, that it "has a wax nose': in other words, it can be pointed in any direction, if one is clever enough. Everything makes sense, is so convincing, whom should we trust? The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes... — Joseph Ratzinger Paintings for Holy Week Christ Washing the Apostle's Feet (Dirck van Baburen)   Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci)   The Last S...

We can be sure that whoever sneers at her [beauty] name, as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past, whether he admits it or not, can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love. — Hans Urs von Balthasar Photography of  Letizia Morini      

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn