Does an architecture to assuage the spirit have a place?


Masterpieces of art possess immense potential to advance a worldview that could help assuage the societal terrors posed by globalization, the most thoroughgoing socioeconomic upheaval since the Industrial Revolution, which has set off a pandemic of retrogressive nationalism, regional separatism, and religious extremism.

In a world in which the United States does less, whatever set of calculations, other countries will tend to calculate - to move in one of two ways. Either they will assuage or, to use a more loaded term, appease the strongest power in the neighborhood with all the consequences of that, or they will determine to take matters into their own hands.

There is nothing you can do to assuage your conscience when you commit sins. Crime is a spiritual assault on the soul.

Gen. George C. Marshall: My dear Mrs Ryan: It's with the most profound sense of joy that I write to inform you your son, Private James Ryan, is well and, at this very moment, on his way home from European battlefields. Reports from the front indicate James did his duty in combat with great courage and steadfast dedication, even after he was informed of the tragic loss your family
has suffered in this great campaign to rid the world of tyranny and oppresion. I take great pleasure in joining the Secretary of War, the men and women of the U.S. Army, and the citizens of a grateful nation in wishing you good health and many years of happiness with James at your side. Nothing, not even the safe return of a beloved son, can compensate you, or the thousands of other American
families, who have suffered great loss in this tragic war. I might share with you some words which have sustained me through long, dark nights of peril, loss, and heartache. And I quote: "I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a
sacrifice upon the alter of freedom." -Abraham Lincoln. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, George C. Marshall, General, Chief of Staff.

Gen. George C. Marshall: I have a letter here, written a long time ago, to a Mrs. Bixby in Boston. So bear with me. "Dear Madam: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which
should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly
a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, Abraham Lincoln."

Sweeney Todd: [singing] Alright! You, sir? How about a shave? Come and visit your good friend Sweeney! You sir! Too, sir. Welcome to the grave... I will have vengeance. I will have salvation... Who, sir? You sir!No one's in the chair. Come on, come on! Sweeney's waiting. I want you bleeders. You sir? Anybody? Gentlemen, now don't be shy. Not one man... No, nor ten men... Nor a
hundred can assuage me. I will have you! And I will get him back even as he gloats; In the meantime I'll practice on less honorable throats... And my Lucy lies in ashes, and I'll never see my girl again. But the work waits! I'm alive at last, and I'm full of joy!