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What would you still love if no one could ever see you loving it?
Private pleasure, public approval, and the preferences that survive without an audience.
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A little context
Some of what you love goes on display: the band on the shirt, the novel left face-up on the café table. Some you keep quiet, like the song you skip when someone else gets in the car. It is hard to say which pile tells more about you, or how much of the first one would last if nobody ever saw it again.
Read alongside it4
ReadingEach mind a different beautyBeauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.
ReadingThe golden rule of the houseHave nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
ReadingThe gem-like flameTo burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
ReadingThe most intense modeArt is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
Nearby questions
- Does knowing change it?A piece of writing moves you to tears. Then you learn a machine wrote every word. Does that change it?
- Can something ugly be great art?Goya's black paintings, a scream in a symphony, a novel built to bore you. Some of the most admired work is hard to enjoy.
- The aura on your screenYou know the Sistine Chapel from images. If you went, what exactly would you be going for?
- The blade and the canvasIf you were angry enough at what it stood for, could you ever be right to put a blade through a painting?
- Can you separate the art from the artist?The work that changed your life was made by someone who did terrible things. Nothing in it has changed, except what you know.
