Yi-Fu Tuan Quotes

The word routine suggests the humdrum and the inconsequential; however, unlike the routines of workplace and office, those of home are not inconsequential for they're dictated by the cyclical requirements of biological life.

for humans, no matter what the warmth and duration of human contact and what the size of the group, a periodic sense of isolation is inescapable; it is no less than the human condition.

Stars define civilization, as no single natural feature on Earth--tree, rock, stream, or mountain--can be said to define cultures.

We think of the house as home and place, but enchanted images of the past are evoked not so much by the entire building, which can only be seen, as by its components and furnishings, which can be touched and smelled as well: the attic and the cellar, the fireplace and the bay window, the hidden corners, a stool, a gilded mirror, a chipped shelf.

Freedom implies space; it means having the power and enough room in which to act.

Only God creates ex nihilo. Humans can only create out of something that already exists, which means there has to be an earlier destruction phase.

Children learn early in life that they cannot always count on their parents’ attention much less their smiles, a lesson in human unpredictability that has to be learned over and over again.

To forgive is to erase a past, depriving it of its power to stain the present.

Experience takes time and calls for patience.

The ease with which a man can lose his sense of self-worth and fall into the pit of self-abasement is a deeply disturbing psychological fact. Asymmetry of power doesn’t have to be extreme for it to happen. All that is required is for it to seem implacable.

A special target of examination ought to be how societies differ in making room for pauses in the midst of life, for it is during such pauses that individuals are able to appraise the meaning of what they have undergone.

...the Oxford system, which did not require students to take set courses or be tested except at the end of three years, encouraged them to read widely, attend public lectures on all sorts of subjects, and above all, talk to one another in small gatherings until dawn breaks or until they ran out of shillings to put in the gas meter. Without knowing it I acquired a well-rounded, if undisciplined, liberal arts education.

America is a much newer experiment in human living, one with moral concerns at its core. In this respect it differs from Europe, which has preferred sophistication and worldly wisdom to "righteousness," and resembles China, which saw the universe itself as essentially a moral order. However materialistic Americans may be in their economic pursuits, their ceremonies emphasize the material far less than European societies have. America has imposing official architecture. Washington, D.C., boasts a radial baroque stateliness. Yet one of its most important buildings, the White House, is a modest dwelling, its scale far smaller than that of the palaces of Europe and Asia.

If each person can achieve greatness, so can each fall into baseness.

People who have ‘music’ in their souls are fun to be with.