It is not badness, it is the ...

It is not badness, it is the absence of goodness, which, in Art as in Life, is so depressing.
 Freya Stark

Quotes from the same author

Perhaps the best function of parenthood is to teach the young creature to love with safety, so that it may be able to venture unafraid when later emotion comes; the thwarting of the instinct to love is the root of all sorrow and not sex only but divinity itself is insulted when it is repressed. To disapprove, to condemn the human soul shrivels under barren righteousness.
 Freya Stark
Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other.
 Freya Stark
An absolute condition of all successful living, whether for an individual or a nation, is the acceptance of death.
 Freya Stark
On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light.
 Freya Stark
Style is something peculiar to one person; it expresses one personality and one only; it cannot be shared.
 Freya Stark