“There are many things in life that put us in a state of
acute pleasure, a state of being ‘opiated’. And there are many things in life
that make us feel marginal or lateral or on the sidelines. But what is deeply
and abidingly extraordinary about beautiful things is that they do those two
things at once. They put us in a state of bliss at the very moment that they
make us feel marginal or secondary, happy to be a supporting rather than a central character. None of us is the
center of the world but each of us can get into the mistake of believing that we are the center of our own world.
Beauty relieves us of this. It not only puts us on the sidelines but makes us
acutely happy to be there on the sidelines.”
Elaine Scarry, Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and
the General Theory of Value, Harvard University, 2011. The quote comes from a
lecture given for a series hosted by Harvard University entitled “Harvard Thinks
Big 2”. Source.
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