# Quote — Robert Hughes, Things I Didn't Know

> ...A column is not merely a round stick of stone: it is part of an entire symbolic system, which one cannot intuit simply by looking at it in isolation. The basic reason for studying such things is not merely technical or archivally historical but humanistic; it is to seek out the answer to what someone like Vitruvius meant by his (to us) mysterious comment that "a building should have the proportions of a man,"

- Author: [Robert Hughes](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes.md)
- Book: [Things I Didn't Know](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/things-i-didnt-know.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Hughes#Things_I_Didn't_Know_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/things-i-didnt-know/a-column-is-not

## More from this book

> Enforced solitude, as in solitary confinement, is a terrible and disorienting punishment, but freely chosen solitude is an immense blessing. To be out of the rattle and clang of quotidian life, to be away from the garbage of other people's amusements and the overflow of their unwanted subjectivities, is the essential escape. Solitude is, beyond question, one of the worlds great gifts and an indispensable aid to creativity, no matter what level that creation may be hatched at.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/things-i-didnt-know/enforced-solitude-as-in-solitary.md)

> So fishing contributed to an important lesson of my life -how to be alone. I still think solitude is one of the world's great gifts. "Se sei solo," wrote Leonardo da Vinci, "sarai tutto tuo"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/things-i-didnt-know/so-fishing-contributed.md)

> The past is pervasive; it seeps into everything;... And yet because the past is irreplaceable and cannot be done again, it was that very past, not the present or the future, that was so delicate, so vulnerable, so dreadfully easy to erase.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/things-i-didnt-know/the-past-is-pervasive.md)