No man… can be a genius; but all men have a genius, to be served or disobeyed at their own peril.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
Art is the well making of what needs making.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
It is one of the prime errors of historical and rational analysis to suppose that the “truth” and “original form” of a legend can be separated from its miraculous elements. It is in the marvels themselves that the truth inheres.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve —an arc of time-experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
Free thought is a passion; it is much rather the thoughts than ourselves that are free.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
Those who think of their house as only a ‘machine to live in’ should judge their point of view by that Neolithic man, who also lived in a house, but a house that embodied a cosmology.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards the man himself is the most indispensable means of spiritual development, and as regards his relation to society the measure of his worth.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
We ‘preserve’ folk songs, at the same time that our way of life destroys the singer…we are proud of our museums, where we display the damning evidence of a way of life that we have made impossible.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Indian Philosopher, Political Leader
- Baba Hari Dass Indian-American Hindu Yogi
- Sivananda Saraswati Hindu Spiritual Teacher
- Paramahansa Yogananda Indian Hindu Mystic
- Roland Barthes French Literary Theorist
- Mohandas K. Gandhi Indian Hindu Political leader
- G. K. Chesterton English Journalist
- Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
- Jacques Derrida French Philosopher, Literary Theorist
- Alan Watts British-American Philosopher
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