"It may be said that in pictorial and other arts there are some designs that are purely decorative and apparently have no living and inner ideal to express. But this cannot be true. These decorations carry the emotional motive of the artist, which says: 'I find joy in my creation, it is good.' All the language of joy is beauty. It is necessary to note here that joy is not pleasure, and beauty is no mere prettiness. Joy is the outcome of the detachment from self, freedom of spirit. Beauty is that profound expression of reality which satisfies our hearts without any other allurements, but its own ultimate value. When in some pure moments of ecstasy we realize this in the world around us, we see this world, not as merely existing, but as decorated in its forms of sounds, colors, lines; we feel in our hearts that there is one, who through all things proclaims: 'I have joy in my creation.'"1

Rabindranath Tagore, "The Creative Ideal"

OUR LIFE SAILS on the uncrossed sea whose waves chase each other in an eternal hide-and-seek.

It is the restless sea of change, feeding its foaming flocks to lose them over and over again, beating its hands against the calm of the sky.

LOVE, in the center of this circling war dance of light and dark, yours is that green island, where the sun kisses the shy forest shade and silence is wooed by birds' singing.2

Tagore

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