Profaned Quotes

“I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.”

“I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was “it”? “It” was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless.”

“In the old age black was not counted fair,Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.But now is black beauty’s successive heir,And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.For since each hand hath put on nature’s pow'r,Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bow'r,But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seemAt such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.  Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,  That every tongue says beauty should look so.”

“For the anarch, little has changed; flags have meaning for him, but not sense. I have seen them in the air and on the ground like leaves in May and November; and I have done so as a contemporary and not just as a historian. The May Day celebration will survive, but with a different meaning. New portraits will head up the processions. A date devoted to the Great Mother is re-profaned. A pair of lovers in the wood pays more homage to it. I mean the forest as something undivided, where every tree is still a liberty tree.For the anarch, little is changed when he strips off a uniform that he wore partly as fool’s motley, partly as camouflage. It covers his spiritual freedom, which he will objectivate during such transitions. This distinguishes him from the anarchist, who, objectively unfree, starts raging until he is thrust into a more rigorous straitjacket.”

“We must be people who love to work”