Susan

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson I find it a nice line about how we are not defined by our past or future, but by who we are in our present inner self.

@CuriousVoyagerX It’s a magical place, thanks for sharing! I’ve been nearby at the majestic Dover Castle and a bit further to Canterbury Cathedral, both fascinating for a history fan like me 🙈

One of England’s most iconic natural landmarks, rising up to 350 feet above the English Channel. Formed millions of years ago from the skeletal remains of marine organisms. 📍 White Cliffs of Dover, Kent, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Yes, trusting inner satisfaction when no one else sees it is a real test. I actually read about a similar principle from Zen masters and Western psychologists around the so-called state of flow: just loving what one does, being happy in the work itself, and free of reactions from others. It actually works quite well from my experience (mostly 😉).

@susanworld The hard part is trusting that when no one else sees it.

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Great when the satisfaction is already there in the work itself, whatever others think of it.

@ClassicalAegis I’ve never seen such a beautiful creation of one word.

The Japanese Kanji for dream. 夢 → ゆめ → yume

@TodayinHistory I think the Medicis, especially Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, blended genuine love of beauty and art with building a legacy and family name. I’m imagining they loved the Florence they helped create (and maybe also the power and influence that came with it 😉).

The Medici family spent a fortune in patronage to the arts and making Florence beautiful. Lorenzo de’ Medici regretted none of it! “After 37 years I find that from 1434 till now we have spent large sums of money…but I do not regret this…I consider that it gave great honour to our State, and I think the money was well expended, and am well pleased.” We need billionaires today like Lorenzo de’ Medici!

@CultureExploreX Now how am I supposed to travel to all this beauty? These places look unreal. Amazing thread.

Switzerland looks unreal in places. Glacier lakes, cliffside villages, medieval towns, waterfalls, castles, and mountains that make you wonder how one small country holds this much beauty. Let’s travel through 20 of its most iconic and scenic places. 🧵

Great read about this legendary order of monk-knights. Sending photos I took while visiting the Temple Church in London (built mid-12th century), English headquarters of the Templars till their suppression in 1312. On one is a stained-glass picture of their symbolic seal (poverty and shared purpose): two knights on one horse.

Were the Templars just victims of politics, or did they carry a secret too dangerous to survive? The Knights Templar were monks with swords, and that contradiction made them unforgettable. They began as a small group of knights protecting pilgrims on the dangerous roads to Jerusalem. Soon, they were living on the Temple Mount, fighting in the Crusades, building castles, and handling money for kings and pilgrims across Europe. Their power made them respected, but it also made them feared. When King Philip IV of France fell deep into debt, he turned against them, accused them of heresy, and had them arrested in 1307. The order was destroyed, but the mystery never died. Read in the Culture Explorer newsletter: newsletter.thecultureexplorer.com

@AbdElmonem37538 Exactly! I’ve noticed you also post about beauty sometimes, and I agree, it’s such an important part of life, in the good times and the difficult ones. Beauty gives meaning and elevates everything.

@susanworld You nailed it. Beauty isn't an ornament it's the language of the soul. When we ignore it, we lose a part of our humanity. Scruton was right, a world without beauty is a world without meaning.

“Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter”… — Roger Scruton, Beauty The way I read his words is that beauty is not just a luxury or a matter of taste, but something we actually need. Scruton even puts beauty alongside truth and goodness, as one of the things that make life worth living. When we stop caring about it, the world feels thinner.

@SwellForLife Exactly, Nate. Beauty makes life so much nicer when we treat it as the instinctive need it truly is.

@susanworld I like the idea of needing beauty. Not for relief, but as something instinctive we're drawn too.

Nice to be working with music and traveling to nice locations as well. I’m a huge history, art, and philosophy fan. I’ve also travelled a lot to beautiful European cathedrals, including Florence a few times. And not that far away from Speyer are Reims (France) with two beautiful cathedrals, and Metz. True, each of them has a slightly different atmosphere, but all are fascinating in their own way, at least for me.

@susanworld Good for you. 🙂 I'm a conductor and music critic and travel a lot abroad, visiting orchestras and opera houses. Mostly Italy, where I sit in front of cathedrals and domes a lot, sometimes hours. I find German churches sometimes 'spirituality inaccessible', dont know why exactly

Oh wow! They built this chapel in the so-called Dark Ages. What were they thinking? Pilgrims climbed 268 steps towards Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe's in search of salvation. A reminder of what a civilization can build when faith still reaches for the sky.

@the_culturist_ Wonderful to call for the transcendental virtues again (Truth, Goodness, and Beauty), where the finite touches the eternal…

X needs much more beauty posting. Follow accounts like this that do it every day. Fill your timeline with Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

@PeterSchlamilch I found Speyer Cathedral fascinating. It also has a huge crypt and was the burial site for early German kings and emperors. And thanks for the nod, I like this Socrates line about independent thinking and questioning.

@susanworld @CultureExploreX Beautiful. Going there soon, I'll try to remenber and vist. Thanks. Nice motto by the way: 'think for yourself'.

@TodayinHistory I looked it up, it seems the city’s wealth originated in the cloth trade, which helped fund the amazing architecture and art, such as the Ghent Altarpiece by the van Eycks. Thanks for sharing!

Ghent was one of the largest European cities in the 13th century, and it now has maybe the best preserved historic center in all of Europe 🙌🏼

@CuriousVoyagerX Beautiful. I looked it up and it seems the church holds a major relic tied to Hungary’s (first) king St. Stephen, thanks for sharing!

Lavish interior of St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺 It is the largest church in Budapest, with a capacity to hold approximately 8,000 to 8,500 people.

@ClassicalAegis What a lucky scuba-dive for all of us!

The Riace Bronzes are over 2,400 years old. A scuba diver discovered them off the coast of Riace, lying on the seabed about 8 meters deep. They remain one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century.

@AbdElmonem37538 @bsm434919826347 Well said. True beauty is timeless.

@bsm434919826347 الجمال الحقيقي عابر للزمن. زي الربيع بالظبط، دايماً بيلاقي طريقه للرجوع لينا.

إذا عاد ربيع الحياة مرّة ثانية، ⁠وذاب الثلج القديم بخشخشةٍ، ⁠سأرى ذات الابتسامة المتألقة، ⁠وأصغي لذات النداء الرنّان للأحلام البعيدة، ⁠فالأشياء الجميلة أبدا لن تتلاشى، ⁠الأشياء الجميلة ⁠تخلد إلى الأبد .

@Plantagenet1455 What a remarkable woman. She influenced the European world of that time in such a significant yet subtle way.

As Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, Margaret of York acted as the de facto protector of the Burgundian state. She guided her stepdaughter Mary and helped secure her crucial marriage to Maximilian of Austria—a diplomatic move that safeguarded the duchy from the ambitions of Louis XI.

@the_culturist_ Sense of beauty, devotion, faith? Nice to share and talk about the legacy of those times.

Does humanity have any greater architectural legacy than the Gothic cathedrals of Europe? > Built with no power tools or engines > Just wooden cranes powered by men in a treadwheel > 300,000 tons of stone transported by ox-cart > Solid stone vaulted ceiling that floats in the air > Walls so thin that they could be mostly glass > Unfathomably complex geometry encoded in > All calculated with some string and a compass > Built by towns of a few thousand people at most > Generations of builders who knew they'd never live to see the end result What inspires a people to even attempt something like this?