Top 15 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.

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

The world feels spacious and friendly when it accommodates our desires, and cramped when it frustrates them.

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.

Experience takes time and calls for patience.

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

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

We have no trouble naming the basic physical needs of food, shelter, and sex, nor the basic social needs of care, respect, and love. Can there also be a spiritual need that goes beyond even love as it is commonly understood to something for which the words that most readily come to mind are goodness, the Good, or God? Absent food, shelter, and sex, we die. Absent care, respect, and love, we live--barely. Absent that deep and insatiable spiritual yearning for the Good that certain stories and fables prefigure? We live, and indeed we may live well, in full, societal approbation and self-congratulatory glow, except, perhaps, in those uncanny moments--the sudden chill in the air, a pinched feeling in the heart, or even a stumble over the curb that reminds us of the abyss beneath the pavement on which we so unconcernedly walk.

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

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.

Words designate, but they also evoke a sense of something, and, when they do, they function as metaphors. ...Metaphors enrich life, making it more vivid.

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

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.

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

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.