Art Quotes — page 17

Listen to them — the children of the night. What music they make.

Flowers, the sole luxury which nature knew, In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.[…] Gay without toil, and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense, and glad the heart.

Art, industry, and commerce, so long crushed and overborne, were stirring into renewed life, and a crowd of adventurous men, nurtured in war and incapable of repose, must seek employment for their restless energies in fields of peaceful …

My life is like a music-hall, Where, in the impotence of rage, Chained by enchantment to my stall, I see myself upon the stage Dance to amuse a music-hall.

Things proceed as they were ordered, in their nice, and well-adjusted, and perfect harmony; so that as the hand of the skilful artist gathers music from the harp-strings, history calls it forth from the well-tuned chords of time.

Let us never forget that, to be profited, that is, to be spiritually improved in knowledge, faith, holiness, joy, and love, is the end of hearing sermons, and not merely to have our taste gratified by genius, eloquence, and oratory.

To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction. The new art of controlling electrically the movements …

My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ Attempt translation.

[M]ost of the appearing mirth in the world is not mirth, but art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.

Hail Guest! We ask not what thou art: If Friend, we greet thee, hand and heart; If Stranger, such no longer be; If Foe, our love shall conquer thee.

They [Sisters of Charity in Frederick] excel in music, which is an indispensable thing in this country, even for the poor. No piano, no pupils! Such is the spirit of this country -- Music and Steam!

[M]y credo is very short. Its first article is art—and its second is art—and its third is art!

Please picture me now as one of these circus-chariot-ladies, with one hand driving an exciting tandem, — arts and law—and with the other hand holding aloft two streaming banners, —love and liberty.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

the likeliest method to enable us to make the most judicious observations, and to put us upon the most probable means of improving any art, is to get the best insight we can into the nature and properties of those things which we are …

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. …

Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease, And my fingers wandered idly Over the noisy keys. I do not know what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then; But I struck one chord of music,

Crave the tuneful nightingale to help you with her lay, The ousel and the throstlecock, chief music of our May.

Thou art my life, my way, my light

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.

But listen, what harmony holy Is mingling its notes with our own! The discord is vanishing slowly, And melts in that dominant tone. And they that have heard it can never Return to confusion again,

But, thou art ever there, to bring The hovering vision back, and breathe New glories o'er the blighted spring, And call a lovelier Life from Death, And whisper, with a voice divine, Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art to a degree that no class of servants in America has yet reached. In our country the servant expects to become, in a few years, a …