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Elaine Scarry Quotes

born 1946 United States

Elaine Scarry (born June 30, 1946) is an essayist and professor who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

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Random Elaine Scarry quote

8 quotes

To have pain is to have certainty; to hear about pain is to have doubt.

The Body in Pain (1985)

How one walks through the world, the endless small adjustments of balance, is affected by the shifting weights of beautiful things. (p. 15)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

Physical pain has no voice, but when it at last finds a voice, it begins to tell a story. (Introduction, p3)

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985)

The structure of one’s position with regards to the suffering of others shapes one’s perceptions and thinking almost completely.

with Bidoun (2006)

Pain is not a verbal construct. When something like suffering becomes almost impossible to put into language, it’s a disaster.

with Bidoun (2006)

Beauty brings copies of itself into being. (p. 3)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

Something beautiful fills the mind yet invites the search for something beyond itself, something larger or something of the same scale with which it needs to be brought into relation. (p 21)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

To misstate, or even merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that can be destroyed. (p. 8)

On Beauty and Being Just (1998)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Elaine Scarry (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.