Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As all Art depends on Vision, so the different kinds of Art depend on the different ways in which minds look at things.
Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.
I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.
Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.
To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it.
Character is built out of circumstances. From exactly the same materials, one man builds palaces, while another builds hovels.
Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.
The delusions of self-love cannot be prevented, but intellectual misconceptions as to the means of achieving success may be corrected.
It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public.
Individual experiences being limited and individual spontaneity feeble, we are strengthened and enriched by assimilating the experience of others.
No deeply rooted tendency was ever extirpated by adverse judgment. Not having originally been founded on argument, it cannot be destroyed by logic.
It is not enough that a man has clearness of vision, and reliance on sincerity, he must also have the art of expression, or he will remain obscure.
To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.
Whatever lies beyond the limits of experience, and claims another origin than that of induction and deduction from established data, is illegitimate.
When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.
In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect-its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions-its purpose being pleasure.
The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put an end to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions.
Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.
A man must be himself convinced if he is to convince others. The prophet must be his own disciple, or he will make none. Enthusiasm is contagious: belief creates belief.
Endeavour to be faithful, and if there is any beauty in your thought, your style will be beautiful; if there is any real emotion to express, the expression will be moving.
It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.
The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief
In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is every where. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life ; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle.
In its happiest efforts, translation is but approximation, and its efforts are not often happy. A translation may be good as translation, but it cannot be an adequate reproduction of the original.
To his [ Plato's ] great disappointment, he found Anaxagoras adducing simple physical reasons, instead of the teleological reasons, which he had expected. Such a teacher could no longer allure him.
The discoverer and the poet are inventors; and they are so because their mental vision detects the unapparent, unsuspected facts, almost as vividly as ocular vision rests on the apparent and familiar.
Except in the rare cases of great dynamic thinkers whose thoughts are as turning-points in the history of our race, it is by Style that writers gain distinction, by Style they secure their immortality.
If a work of art is placed before me, I believe I can enjoy it; but I do not overlook the fact, that Art is one thing, another thing Amusement; and that people do like amusements, and will run after it.
The mathematician who is without value to mathematicians, the thinker who is obscure or meaningless to thinkers, the dramatist who fails to move the pit, may be wise, may be eminent, but as an author he has failed.
Every one who has seriously investigated a novel question, who has really interrogated Nature with a view to a distinct answer, will bear me out in saying that it requires intense and sustained effort of imagination.
The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.
Those works alone can have enduring success which successfully appeal to what is permanent in human nature -- which, while suiting the taste of the day, contain truths and beauty deeper than the opinions and tastes of the day.
It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalatable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it.
Heart and Brain are the two lords of life. In the metaphors of ordinary speech and in the stricter language of science, we use these terms to indicate two central powers, from which all motives radiate, to which all influences converge.
The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.
Whatever you believe to be true and false, that proclaim to be true and false; whatever you think admirable and beautiful, that should be your model, even if all your friends and all the critics storm at you as a crotchet-monger and an eccentric.
The prosperity of a book lies in the minds of readers. Public knowledge and public taste fluctuate; and there come times when works which were once capable of instructing and delighting thousands lose their power, and works, before neglected, emerge into renown.
To love is for the Soul to choose a companion, and travel with it along the perilous defiles and winding ways of life; mutually sustaining, when it is rugged with obstructions, and mutually rejoicing, when rich broad plains and sunny slopes make journeying delight.
Over the meeting of the lovers I draw a veil. The burst of rapture with which they clasped each other in a wild embrace -- the many inquiries -- the fond regrets and thrilling hopes -- it is out of my power to convey. Let me, therefore, leave them to their happiness.
The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.
He who is ignorant of Motion, says Aristotle , is necessarily ignorant of all natural things. ...Not only was he entirely in the dark respecting the Laws, he was completely wrong in his conception of the nature of Motion. ...He thought that every body in motion naturally tends to rest.
A man may be buoyed up by the efflation of his wild desires to brave any imaginable peril; but he cannot calmly see one he loves braving the same peril; simply because he cannot feel within turn that which prompts another. He sees the danger, and feels not the power that is to overcome it.
Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions--these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term "experience.
If the members of a class do not understand -- if those directly addressed fail to listen, or listening, fail to recognize a power in the voice -- surely the fault lies with the speaker, who, having attempted to secure their attention and enlighten their understandings, has failed in the attempt.
Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.
Most expositions of Aristotle's doctrines, when they have not been dictated by a spirit of virulent detraction, or unsympathetic indifference, have carefully suppressed all, or nearly all, the absurdities, and only retained what seemed plausible and consistent. But in this procedure their historical significance disappears.
Roger Bacon, a disciple of the Arabs, also insisted on the primary necessity of Mathematics, without which no other science can be known; yet by Mathematics it is clear that he meant something very different from what we mean, including under that head even dancing, singing, gesticulation, and performance on musical instruments.
The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.
Literature is at once the cause and the effect of social progress. It deepens our natural sensibilities, and strengthens by exercise our intellectual capacities. It stores up the accumulated experience of the race, connecting Past and Present into a conscious unity; and with this store it feeds successive generations, to be fed in turn by them.
Our native susceptibilities and acquired tastes determine which of the many qualities in an object shall most impress us, and be most clearly recalled. One man remembers the combustible properties of a substance, which to another is memorable for its polarising property; to one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.