Quotes & Sayings About Important Objects

It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master. — James F. Cooper

For pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space ; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects ; and sounds very remote and then very close ; flesh being gashed and blood sparting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude. - Virginia Woolf, The Waves — Virginia Woolf

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects. — Walter Pater

I consider the proper education of our youths one of the most important objects now to be attained and one from which the greatest benefits may be expected. — Robert E.Lee

If you haven't said 'I love you' to someone today, do it. You won't always be happy, but you should try to be. Don't be too afraid of germs. Those people have no fun. Remember to look around sometimes. You might see something you haven't seen before or at the very least avoid being hit by a flying object. Speaking of flying objects, don't spend your life looking for extraterrestrial life, unless you work for NASA. Remember that you always have to cooperate with someone. Life is an endless negotiation. Play fair. Stay out of jail. Don't live in the past. Eat breakfast. It really is the most important meal of the day. Try to make new friends, even when you think you're too old to do that ... And finally, remember this 'Yes' is always a better work than 'no'. Unless, of course, someone has just asked you to commit a felony. — Lisa Lutz

The economy of early hominids and that of twenty-first century society have enormous differences, but they do share one important feature: in both of these economies, humans accumulate information in objects. Our world is different from that of early hominids only in the way in which atoms are arranged. — Cesar Hidalgo

Museums hold collections in trust for future generations. It is our responsibility to see that these objects - representing the cultural heritage of more than 8,000 years of civilization - are passed on to the next generation . . . . The next generation may choose to look at objects afresh - without our carefully collected input - and form its own opinions about their purpose, history or intended use. What is important is that future observers have at their disposal the records of what was known or believed at the time. — Holly Witchey

Thwarted, or starved, in the important objects proper to young capacities, the boys and young men naturally find or invent deviant objects for themselves ... Their choices and inventions are rarely charming, usually stupid, and often disastrous; we cannot expect average kids to deviate with genius. But on the other hand, the young men who conform to the dominant society become for the most part apathetic, disappointed, cynical and wasted. — Paul Goodman

We are the slaves of objects around us, and appear little or important according as these contract or give us room to expand. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.
...
Long after he's dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It's stupid to believe we own them. And it's sinful for them to be so important. — Donna Leon

I find it very sad that so many girls who look up to me are young women of color who have been told that they are ugly, and who feel that they are not normal ... I think it's so important that women look like me find that they can be beautiful or objects of love, attention and affection. — Mindy Kaling

But for pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects; and sounds very remote and then very close; flesh being gashed and blood spurting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude. — Virginia Woolf

The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined. — John N. Bahcall

Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" (1917)
Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to
make the stone
stony
. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are
perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects
"unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception
because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
Art
is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important. — Elizabeth Bishop

Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects - hardly recognizable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles - made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.
'It seems cruel,' she said, 'that after a while nothing matters ... any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labeled: "Use unknown".' — Edith Wharton

Two observations take us across the finish line. The Second Law ensures that entropy increases throughout the entire process, and so the information hidden within the hard drives, Kindles, old-fashioned paper books, and everything else you packed into the region is less than that hidden in the black hole. From the results of Bekenstein and Hawking, we know that the black hole's hidden information content is given by the area of its event horizon. Moreover, because you were careful not to overspill the original region of space, the black hole's event horizon coincides with the region's boundary, so the black hole's entropy equals the area of this surrounding surface. We thus learn an important lesson. The amount of information contained within a region of space, stored in any objects of any design, is always less than the area of the surface that surrounds the region (measured in square Planck units). — Brian Greene

Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an "integral part," a kind of switch with screw holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody knows what. This thing's use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by bluff, like certain insects that escape being eaten because of their formidable appearance. — Louis Jenkins

No matter what documents you investigate, and what objects you retrieve, you many never answer the questions that are most important to you, but nevertheless, sooner or later you must finish whatever file you have begun. — Lemony Snicket

It has long been known to me that certain objects want you as much as you want them. These are the ones that become important, the objects that you hold dear. The others fade from your life entirely. You wanted them, but they did not want you in return. — Sheila Heti

From doing to listening
in the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts ... The promise of Jesus is to help us discover that the poor are a source of life and not just objects of our charity. — Jean Vanier

Well, you missed out on some important protocol, Ella. You can't stand between a Texan and his power tools. We like them. Big ones that drain the national grid. We also like truck-stop breakfasts, large moving objects, Monday night football, and the missionary position. We don't drink light beer, drive Smart cars, or admit to knowing the names of more than about five or six colors. And we don't wax our chests, ever. — Lisa Kleypas

Architecture, either practically considered or viewed as an art of taste, is a subject so important and comprehensive in itself, that volumes would be requisite to do it justice. Buildings of every description, from the humble cottage to the lofty temple, are objects of such constant recurrence in every habitable part of the globe, and are so strikingly indicative of the intelligence, character, and taste of the inhabitants, that they possess in themselves a great peculiar interest for the mind. — Andrew Jackson Downing

Seventh letter : Life's simplest pleasures are life's greatest joys

Most people dont discover whats most important in life untill they are too old to do anything about it. They spend many of their best years pursuing things that matter little in the end. While society invites us to fill our with material objects, the best part of us knows that the more basic pleasures are the ones that enriches and sustain us. No matter how easy or hard our conditions, we all have wealth of simple blessings around us - waiting to be continued. As we do our happiness grows. Our gratitude expands. And each day becomes a breathtaking gift. — Robin S. Sharma

Things are just that - things. They don't make us who we are. They make us look better on the outside, even when we're hollow on the inside. They're an illusion - the shiny objects that distract us from the really important things. — Chelle Bliss

People make themselves unhappy by desiring and praising only one thing, by becoming too one-sided in trying to find contentment. If we were just in harmony with ourselves we would enjoy the things of this world much more. But when we have an inordinate amount of desires and aspirations, we only listen to them, we are incapable of understanding the essential innocence of things outside ourselves. Unfortunately, we often term those things important that are the objects of our emotions, and those things that have no relation to our desires are called unimportant; however, many times it is exactly the opposite. — Adalbert Stifter

The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could be distributed ... A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement. — John Stuart Mill

The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect - but not in the way that the magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them. — Aldous Huxley

So is the English Parliament provincial. Mere country bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,
the English question why did I not say? Their natures are subdued to what they work in. Their "good breeding" respects only secondary objects. — Henry David Thoreau

Books as objects are not what books are, it's not what's important about them — Jo Walton

We've clearly entered a period in which the analog of text is no longer important or relevant. All text will be electronic. I accept that fact. My house has thousands of books in it, and I've started to look at them completely differently. They now seem to me to be like antiquarian objects. Their use value has become negligible to me because I'm perfectly happy to read on an e-reader. — Will Self

People have seen that I intend to sweep away everything we have been taught to consider - without question - as grace and beauty; but have overlooked my work to substitute a vaster beauty, touching all objects and beings, not excluding the most despised - and because of that, all the more exhilarating ...
I would like people to look at my work as an enterprise for the rehabilitation of scorned values, and, in any case, make no mistake, a work of ardent celebration ...
I am convinced that any table can be for each of us a landscape as inexhaustible as the whole Andes range ... I am struck by the high value, for a man, of a simple permanent fact, like the miserable vista on which the window of his room opens daily, that comes, with the passing of time, to have an important role in his life. I often think that the highest destination at which a work of art can aim is to take on that function in someone's life. — Jean Dubuffet

I don't like things that can be reproduced. Wood isn't important in itself but rather in the fact that objects made in it are unique, simple, unpretentious. — Georg Baselitz

Thus the criminal ceases to be a person, a subject of rights and duties, and becomes merely an object on which society can work. And this is, in principle, how Hitler treated the Jews. They were objects; killed not for ill desert but because, on his theories, they were a disease in society. If society can mend, remake, and unmake men at its pleasure, its pleasure may, of course, be humane or homicidal. The difference is important. But, either way, rulers have become owners. — C.S. Lewis

In our quest to quickly make three-dimensional objects, we can miss out on the experience of making something that helps give us our first understandings of form and material, of the way a material behaves
'I press too hard here, and it breaks here' and so on. Some of the digital rendering tools are impressive, but it's important that people still really try and figure out a way of gaining direct experience with the materials. — Jonathan Ive

I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important. — Jacques-Henri Lartigue

It was important that people come to value light as we value gold, silver, paintings, objects. — James Turrell

I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops. — Richard Diebenkorn

My home is different from my mother's, because hers is filled with beautiful objects that I was always afraid of breaking. My home is the opposite. Bring on the kids, the dogs, the parties - there's nothing that's so important it can't be broken. — Cybill Shepherd

Beautiful and familiar objects can help us to feel better. Photos of family and friends, which remind us of the people we love and who love us, are important mood-lifters. Items that inspire us or encourage periods of reflection do the same. — Liz Miller

Our capacity to draw happiness from aesthetic objects or material goods in fact seems critically dependent on our first satisfying a more important range of emotional or psychological needs, among them the need for understanding, for love, expression and respect. — Alain De Botton

I began to understand that the most worthwhile obsession is an obsession that is actually independent of the object of fixation. The object is only borrowed as a pretext, a means, an environment, through which or in which the obsessed person can project his own eternal and essential hunger, thus fulfilling the requirements of death
the dissolution of the ego for something, anything, that exists independently outside of one's self. Perhaps that obsession should be controlled. At some point the most mundane catalyst, a skirt or fallen leaf, is enough to provoke a series of captivating chain reactions, while at another time much more important objects will inspire only an absurd indifference. — Pham Thi Hoai

The archaeologists who will come and blow away the ashes from our house will unearth only the metal parts of the sophisticated furnishings, and it will take them some time to reconstruct their original beauty; they will find very few objects and almost no embellishments, not even in Emanuele's room, which from year to year is being emptied of toys and colors, because everything that's important to him is now found in the circuits of a tablet. I wonder what would suggest to them that a couple and then a family had lived in those rooms and that they were happy together, at least for long stretches of time. — Paolo Giordano

Then as now the PC held a curious power over restless, analytical people. To start with, the computer carried a psychological appeal not unlike that of an automobile. Both machines were objects of intense attachment for many of their owners - feelings of attachment that went well beyond the utility of the machines. While illustrating the way in which people can form emotional bonds with tools, the symbolisms of the automobile and the PC differed in an important way. The realm of the automobile extended no further than that of fantasy and enjoyment. The PC, by contrast, was a medium for creation. The utility of a PC arose directly from its software. Writing software required little money and, surprisingly, scant experience. — G. Pascal Zachary

Human beings are really attuned to their senses. When you work in film, you are working with the visual and audio senses. An understanding of tactile and other components that go into the creation of those objects are important to making them look real on screen, like a plasma of energy. — John Dykstra

I am certain that over the course of your own life, you have noticed that people's rooms reflect their personalities. In my room, for instance, I have gathered a collection of objects that are important to me, including a dusty accordion on which I can play a few sad songs, a large bundle of notes on the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, and a blurry photograph, taken a very long time ago, of a woman whose name is Beatrice. These are items that are very precious and dear to me. — Lemony Snicket

When you look at pornography, the women become objects, whereas what I'm trying to do is make the person in the photograph as important as their body. And obviously, I like tits and arse, because I just do. I like the sex of taking photographs. — Rankin

The course and affairs of our individual life, in view of their true meaning and connection, are like a piece of crude work in mosaic. So long as one stands close in front of it, one can not correctly see the objects presented, or perceive their importance and beauty; it is only by standing some distance away that both come into view. And in the same way one often understands the true connection of important events in one's own life, not while they are happening, or even immediately after they have happened, but only a long time afterwards. — Arthur Schopenhauer

With the increasing importance of standards for system-level objects such as COM and CORBA, it is particularly important that the C++ bindings to those be clean, well documented, and simple to use. — Bjarne Stroustrup

Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of "criteria" for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no "object" that has not stood the test of criticism — Max Scheler

The way that light hits objects, I think, is one of the more important things that sculpture and photography share. — Rashid Johnson

If you are collector, let other people share your pride and joy. Don't sprinkle your collection out of sight in a meaningless jumble. Notice how groups of small objects, when they are well arranged, become important and effective. Remember that repetition is a form of emphasis. Collect what you will, but see to it that you arrange your hobby to its best advantage. — Dorothy Draper

Meditation does not have to be long or complicated for you to receive its benefits. If you haven't done it before, I suggest you begin by meditating for five minutes a day. A good time to engage in this practice is in the morning just after you've awakened, but you can do it at any time that works for you. Find a comfortable position where you are sitting with your spine straight. Close your eyes and concentrate on your breath. Just follow your breath in and out for five minutes. If you find that you have started to think of something other than your breath during those five minutes, gently pull yourself back to concentrating on your breath. What you are seeking is five minutes of relaxed, easy focus on your breath. In, out, in, out, in, out. Summarizing how important this centeredness practice is, the Zen master Pao-chih simply said, "If the mind is never aroused toward objects, then wherever you walk is the site of enlightenment. — Anonymous

We don't go further than what Marx called the exchange value of the actual object- we don't think about the relations that that object embodies- and were important to the production of that object, whether it's our food or our clothes or our iPads or all the materials we use to acquire an education at an institution like this. That would really be revolutionary to develop a habit of imagining the human relations and non-human relations behind all of the objects that constitute our environment. — Angela Davis

We're physical objects, we think of ourselves as these kind of free-floating brains, but the brain is such a little part. It's way smaller than we like to think. We think we're these important human beings. We're not animals or anything. But what did we come out of? What are we made out of? We're made of the same stuff as out there. — Melissa Holbrook Pierson

The camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. When the photographer selects this movement, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture in relationship to the mountain tree or what not, which are included. — Paul Strand

Of course it is fine to highlight any group that you feel is important. But it's becoming impossible to define that group as "oppressed," because now every group claims to be oppressed, and none admit they are oppressors. White males used to be the bad guys, but now even they have caught the fever. White males are no longer a single group that can be blamed for oppression, because most of them now claim to belong to an oppressed or marginalized group themselves: they are drug addicts, physically handicapped, alcoholics, were sexually abused as a child, victims of an absent father, abducted by aliens, or turned into "success objects" by women. They can't oppress anybody because they are too busy being oppressed themselves. Besides, — Ken Wilber

To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most - suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another - are defeated. This work is not done as a job, ladies and gentlemen, it is done out of love for the art and the artists who brought it forth, and who still bring it forth to us, down the years and across ignorance and chaos and borderlines. — Richard Bausch

How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal. — E. M. Forster

IBM was granted a U.S. patent in 2012 on "Securing premises using surface-based computing technology." That's intellectual-property-lawyer-speak for a touch-sensitive floor covering, somewhat like a giant smartphone screen. The potential uses are plentiful. It would be able to identify the objects on it. In basic form, it could know to turn on lights in a room or open doors when a person enters. More important, however, it might identify individuals by their weight or the way they stand and walk. It could tell if someone fell and did not get back up, an important feature for the elderly. Retailers could learn the flow of traffic through their stores. When the floor is datafied, there is no ceiling to its possible uses. — Viktor Mayer-Schonberger