"...For the truths which intelligence captures directly, in the clear light of the world, have something less deep, less necessary than those which life, regardless of us, has transmitted to us through an impression, material since it entered through our senses, but whose spirit we can extract." Marcel Proust

Barber, India

Baltimore Harbor

Goat Herder, Tibet

"Art does not appear in the song of a bird, yet even the simplest transformation executed correctly is already art, without the slightest doubt." Igor Stravinsky

"Rocks hanging daringly above us, weighing down on us like a threat, storm clouds gathered in the sky advancing through thunder and lightning, volcanoes with all their destructive power, typhoons followed by desolations, the vast ocean swollen and enraged, the gigantic waterfall of a threatening river make our power to resist all these phenomena seem insignificantly small. But the more terrifying the spectacle, the more it attracts us. And we spontaneously call these objects sublime because they make us discover within us a power of resistance of a completely different kind, which gives us the courage to measure ourselves against the apparent omnipotence of nature." Immanuel Kant

"The appropriate school for studying art is not Life but Art itself." Oscar Wilde

Montmartre, Paris

"We must keep a back room for ourselves, truly free, within which we can establish our true freedom and make it our main retreat in solitude. There, we must converse daily with ourselves in such an exclusive manner that no relationship or contact with foreign matters can find its place. There, we must speak and laugh as if we were without a spouse and without children, without possessions and servants, so that when the time comes that we lose them, the deprivation will not be something new. We have a soul capable of turning inwards. It can keep itself company, it has ways to attack and defend, to receive and to offer...." Montaigne

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do." Da Vinci

Bangok

"Life is absurd. You can fill it with ideas. You can fill it enthusiasm. You can fill it with joy. That’s all you can do." Albert Camus

Portland, Maine

Baltimore, Maryland

Evora, Portugal