72nd Street Book Guy

The personal blog of a design historian living in New York City. Follow me on Pinterest and Twitter. Or, email me designscouting gmail.com

A house is more than just a shelter from the storm. How we shape our homes, and how we behave within them, speak volumes about our history, our values and our way of life. - New York Times

Living is the greatest art of all. - Alfred Stieglitz

To have less would be in many cases to have more - more tranquility of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment. - Candace Wheeler

To be alive means to live in a world that preceded one's arrival and will survive one's departure. - Hannah Arendt Found Via Jessica Helfand

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

David Foster Wallace, Commencement address at Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, May 21, 2005.

(Found via Even*Cleveland)

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