Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
Susan SontagRead
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Moral beauty in art is fleeting and less enduring than artistic or intellectual beauty.
In this quote, Susan Sontag reflects on the nature of moral beauty in art, suggesting that it is not as lasting as the beauty found in artistic expression or intellectual thought. She warns that moral beauty can quickly deteriorate into something trite or outdated, emphasizing the fragility of ethical themes in art and their tendency to lose their impact over time.
Themes
Moral BeautyArtPerishabilityAestheticIntellectual Beauty
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on the philosophy of art, one could reference this quote to discuss the transient nature of moral themes.
More from Susan Sontag
All quotes βScience fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.
Susan SontagRead
Gide and I have attained such perfect intellectual communion that I experience the appropriate labor pains for every thought he gives birth to!
Susan SontagRead
Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.
Susan SontagRead
In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.
Susan SontagRead
It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.
Susan SontagRead
Similar quotes
When I sit down to write, I don't think about writing about an idea or a given message. I just try to write a story which is hard enough.
Jhumpa LahiriRead
Whatever I do with music, I try to make it align deeply with the values and principles of who I am and what I believe the purpose of my life is.
Jon BatisteRead
A puppet, for example, is just a piece of wood, a couple of rivets, but put them together, and if you know how to do it, and the audience's imagination joins in with this, then a miracle will come out of that machine. That is what we and the audience do in the theatre - we create miracles in that space.
Robert LepageRead
Music washes away the dust of every day life.
Art BlakeyRead
Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.
Gian Carlo MenottiRead