culture and elegance
I’m very excited to begin sharing the wisdom of Baltasar Gracian. His words and philosophy have influenced me deeply. So begins a series of his infinite wisdom…
“We are born barbarians and only raise ourselves above the beast by culture. Culture therefore makes the person; the greater a person the more culture…Ignorance is very raw – nothing contributes so much to culture as knowledge. But even knowledge is coarse if without elegance. Not alone must our intelligence be elegant, but also our desires, and above all our conservation. Some people are naturally elegant in internal and external qualities, in their thoughts, in their words, in their dress, which is the rind of the soul as their talents are its fruit. There are others, on the other hand, so gauche that everything about them, even their most excellent quality, is tarnished by an intolerable and barbaric want of neatness.”
- from The Art of Worldly Wisdom
as we walk our dogs, the culture creates beautiful pictures – we silently pick up the excrements of our pets. But does that raise us above our dogs?
Dark picture appears at shift from spiritual values to human deeds.