Yi-Fu Tuan Quotes

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.

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.

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

Unlike a small village, the city speaks loud and clear of history, of being the terminus of a long, cumulative process.

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.

Experience takes time and calls for patience.

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

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.

Ideally, society is a dance, and every society has its own choreography that is passed down the generations.

In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.

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

At the highest level of achievement, classical music has the feel of an intimate conversation between two individuals and a mass celebration of our common humanity.

Young children distinguish between good people and bad people, but, unless explicitly taught, they do not distinguish between foreigner and native.

We may speak loosely of a ‘sense of time,’ but there is no such sensory organ. Time is something we experience and construct. Time is experienced--is felt--when we wait, expect, or hope.

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