Art Quotes — page 42

Art is upon the Town!

It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you.

And, as a bird each fond endearment tries To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.

Yet truth will sometimes lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact, in virtue's name, let Crabbe attest,— Though Nature's sternest painter, yet the best.

The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love ; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Many a real genius is lost in the fictitious character of the Gentleman. I am the most inconsistent, changeable being so full of fits and starts.

Much individual enterprise in industry does not make for industrial progress. A larger and larger proportion of the energy given out in trade competition is consumed in violent warfare between trade rivals and is not represented either in …

No complete architecture has yet appeared in the history of the world because men, in this form of art alone, have obstinately sought to express themselves solely in terms either of the head or of the heart.

Without the definiteness of sculpture and painting, music is, for that very reason, far more suggestive. Like Milton's Eve, an outline, an impulse, is furnished, and the imagination does the rest.

Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide, Like all created things, secrets from me, And stand a barrier to eternity.

Hence SELECTION in photography, or at least in landscape and some other branches of work, often takes the place of what in painting becomes voluntary COMPOSITION.

[F]ertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.

Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead.

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, …

'Tis thou alone who, with thy mystic fan, Work'st more than wisdom, art, or nature can To rouse the sacred madness and awake The frost-bound blood and spirits, and to make Them frantic with thy raptures flashing through The soul like …

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love; Or chide my palsy, or my gout; My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout; With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve; Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or …

Thespis, the first professor of our art, At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.

But am I not the nobler thro' thy love? O three times less unworthy! likewise thou Art more thro' Love, and greater than thy years.

Rimbaud has epitomized for me the true function of the artist when he wrote: 'The poet should define the quantity of the unknown which awakes in his time, in the universal soul. He should give more than the formula of his thought, than the …

Well, Gaffer [his early friend Mr. Wells, artist] I see there will be no peace till I comply; so give me a piece of paper. There, now, rule the size for me, and tell me what I am to do. [Mr. Wells told him: 'Well divide your subject into …

Literature and art ought to make people soul hungry. (September 4th)

Are there not many Arts which, though speechless, express their meanings with perfect adequacy, with satisfaction to the recipient, and serve at the same time as a medium of communication between soul and soul?

Acting is therefore the lowest of the arts, if it is an art at all.

Great poet, 'twas thy art To know thyself, and in thyself to be Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny, Or the firm, fatal purpose of the Heart Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same, Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.