Titus Burckhardt Quotes

One of the fundamental conditions of happiness is to know that everything that one does has a meaning in eternity

The explanation of this perennial quality of Arabic is to be found simply in the conserving role of nomadism. It is in towns that languages decay, by becoming worn out, the things and institutions they designate. Nomads, who live to some extent outside time, conserve their language better; it is, moreover, the only treasure they can carry around with them in their pastoral existence; the nomad is a jealous guardian of his linguistic heritage, his poetry and his rhetorical art. On the other hand, his inheritance in the way of visual art cannot be rich; architecture presupposes stability, and the same is broadly true of sculpture and painting.

Abul l'-Qasim al-Iraqi writes of such a tree, [...] 'Materia Prima', which can produce the form of the elixir, is obtained from one single tree, which grows in the 'lands of the West'. It has two branches, which are too high to anyone who would eat its fruit to reach without labour and effort, and two others whose fruit is drier and more wrinkled than that of the former. The flower of the first of the two branches is red, and the flower of the second is between white and black. The tree has two further branches, which are weaker and softe rthan th efirst four. The flower of the first of these two branches is black, and that of the second is white and yellow. [...]

St. Hierotheos, the great teacher quoted by Dionysius in his book on Divine Names: "As form giving form to all that is formless, in so far as It is the principle of form, the Divine Nature of the Christ is none the less formless in all that has form, since It transcends all form....

Whereas previously men were differentiated only by their culture, the community is all of sudden split into economically determined classes and, with the cheap products of the factory, a poverty without beauty invades the homes; ugly, senseless, and comfortless poverty is the most widespread of all modern achievements.

Beauty always represents an inward and inexhaustible equilibrium of forces; and this overwhelms our soul, since it can neither be calculated nor mechanically produced. A sense of beauty can therefore permit us the direct experience of relationships before we can perceive them, in a differentiated manner, with our discursive reason; in this, incidentally, there is a defence for our own physical and psychic well-being, something that we cannot neglect with impunity.

It is necessarily so, since every traditional art obeys a particular spiritual economy that limits its themes and means of expression, so that an abandonment of that economy almost immediately releases new and apparently unlimited artistic possibilities.

[...] Black is the absence of colour and light. White is purity, it is undivided light - light not broken down into colours. Red is the epitome of colour, its zenith and its point of greatest intensity. This ordering of things becomes even more evident if, between white and red, a whole series of intermediate colours, such as lemon-yellow, yellow-ochre, and bright red, is inserted, or again, if one speaks of a 'peacock's tail' of gradually unfolding colours. In this case royal purple is always the seal of each series.

A craft can only have meaning when it serves a spiritual way.