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classicalliterature:

Sibelius - Violin Concerto - II. Adagio

David Oistrakh, violin 
Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Eugene Ormandy

One of my favorite concerti ever

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fckyeaharthistory: Salvador Dalí - Galatea Of The Spheres, 1952. Oil on canvas One of my favorite Dalis View high resolution

fckyeaharthistory:

Salvador Dalí - Galatea Of The Spheres, 1952. Oil on canvas

One of my favorite Dalis

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View high resolution
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Salman Rushdie: Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair, Feb 2012)

salmanrushdie1:

On June 8th, 2010, I was “in conversation” with Christopher Hitchens at the 92nd Street Y in New York in front of his customary sellout audience, to launch his memoir, Hitch-22. Christopher turned in a bravura performance that night, never sharper, never funnier, and afterwards at a small,…

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I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then? I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well, All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

I sing the body electric — Walt Whitman

dailyfett:

Boba Fett Hat by BeeBeeKins

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Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically… We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul.
Christopher Hitchens (via offwithitshead)

(Source: kateoplis)

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If every trace of every single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
God, No! — Penn Jillete
classicalliterature: Impressions: Sunrise. Claude Monet.  The term impressionism was first used by Louis Leroy in the French paper Charivari in application to the now famous painter Monet in a derogatory way over the vague nature of his work, Impressions: Sunrise. The aim of impressionists was to “suggest rather than to depict; to mirror not the object but the emotional reaction to the object; to interpret a fugitive impression rather than to seize upon and fix the permanent reality.” The application of the term “impressionist” to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote “I am trying to do ‘something different’—an effect of reality…what the imbeciles call ‘impressionism’, a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art.” The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music. View high resolution

classicalliterature:

Impressions: Sunrise. Claude Monet. 

The term impressionism was first used by Louis Leroy in the French paper Charivari in application to the now famous painter Monet in a derogatory way over the vague nature of his work, Impressions: Sunrise. The aim of impressionists was to “suggest rather than to depict; to mirror not the object but the emotional reaction to the object; to interpret a fugitive impression rather than to seize upon and fix the permanent reality.”

The application of the term “impressionist” to Debussy and the music he influenced is a matter of intense debate within academic circles. One side argues that the term is a misnomer, an inappropriate label which Debussy himself opposed. In a letter of 1908, he wrote “I am trying to do ‘something different’—an effect of reality…what the imbeciles call ‘impressionism’, a term which is as poorly used as possible, particularly by the critics, since they do not hesitate to apply it to Turner, the finest creator of mysterious effects in all the world of art.” The opposing side argues that Debussy may have been reacting to unfavorable criticism at the time, and the negativity that critics associated with impressionism. It can be argued that he would have been pleased with application of the current definition of impressionism to his music.

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If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell.
Hamlet — William Shakespeare