
- categorized under:
- carving
edit
elimination
progress
subtraction
- medium:
- Diary
“Read a wonderful definition by Henry James (senior) of what true progress is. Progress is a process like the modeling and carving of a statue from a block of marble, the elimination of all that is superfluous. The marble, the material, is nothing. The important thing is the carving, the trimming off of the superfluous.”
—
Leo Tolstoy
March 9, 1891 entry, in Tolstoy’s Diaries: Volume 1 1847-1894. Selected, ed., and trans. by R. F. Christian (London: Faber and Faber, 2010), 304.1 »

