"Fine art" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... literature the development of prose is later than that of verse. The latter being, by its very form, artificial, is cultivated as a fine art, and its records preserved in an early stage of society, when prose is simply the talk of men, and not thought worthy of being written and kept. English prose labored under the added disadvantage of competing with Latin, which was the cosmopolitan tongue and the medium ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of physical science, or, in other words, the whole of sensible nature, is included in the domain of imitative art, either as the subjects, the objects, or the materials of imitation: every fine art, therefore, has certain physical sciences collateral to it, on the abstractions of which it builds, more or less, according to its nature and purpose. But the drift of the art itself is something totally distinct from that of the physical science to which it is related; and it is ...
— The Mind of the Artist - Thoughts and Sayings of Painters and Sculptors on Their Art • Various
... music were just a means for the arousal of feelings, it would not be a fine art, but an orgy. For, in order to be aesthetic, feelings must be not merely stimulated by, but objectified in, the sense medium, where they can be mastered and known. But the intimacy of music is not in contradiction with the freedom and objectivity ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... think about it. Happily no thought was required beyond the intelligence that lives in sensitive finger-tips. It was almost mechanical labour, and for that Flossie had more than a taste, she had a positive genius. It was mechanical labour idealized and reduced to a fine art, an art in which the personality of the artist counted. The work displayed to perfection the prettiness of Flossie's hands, from the rapid play of her fingers in sifting, and their little fluttering, hovering movements in arranging, to the exquisitely soft touches of the palms when she gathered ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... dispatch-rider, knew well enough what kamerad meant. He had learned at least that much of German warfare and German honor, even in the quiet Toul sector. He knew that the German olive branch was poisoned; that German treachery was a fine art—a part of the German efficiency. Had not Private Coleburn, whom Tom knew well, listened to that kindly uttered word and been stabbed with a Prussian bayonet in the ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... to play a game of chance is to commit a sin, Ronicky Doone was a very great sinner. Yet it should be remarked that he lacked the fine art of taking the money of other less clever fellows when they were intoxicated, and he also lacked the fine hardness of mind which enables many gamblers to enjoy taking the last cent from an opponent. Also, ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... of warming those interiors, and in a few rare cases of ventilating them, and in providing a variety of apartments, communications, and the like for the varied requirements of a complicated existence; and it need not put on any artistic character at all. But as architecture becomes a fine art, it is perforce one of the arts of decoration. It has nothing to do with the arts of expression. Mr. Ruskin and all his life work to the contrary, notwithstanding, the business of building is not to tell tales about the world and ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... power of the State, had taken away the inspiration that comes from a love of freedom and had thus deprived the rhetorical art of practical value. The work of the schools then became highly stilted and artificial in character, and oratory then came to be cultivated largely as a fine art. [26] Men educated in these schools came to boast that they could speak with equal effectiveness on either side of any question, and the art came to depend on the use of many and big words and on the manners of the stage. Such ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... not a few newspapers is ministered unto by rotund and deceptive representations of circulation. Then, as few can live, much less profit, on their circulations alone, it becomes greatly important to make the advertiser see circulations through the large end of the telescope, and so the fine art of telling truth without lying is a live and perennial study in many counting rooms. Discussing the circulation question not long ago with the head of a leading religious paper, he told me that the number of copies he printed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... a happy smile; for she knew the moods of his genius better than he knew them himself, and she understood that the song he was weaving with voice and lute would be worthy of him, as it is; for in the growth of music, the fine art, his masterpiece of oratorio are left behind and forgotten, being too thin and primitive for an age that began with Beethoven and ended in Richard Wagner; but his songs have not lost their hold on those simpler natures that are still responsive to a melody and vibrate ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... had never been convicted. New York contained several husbands who eyed him askance, but could not verify their suspicions, and the apparent hopelessness of ever doing so made them look on Basil as a man who had carried smoothness into the realms of fine art. He was considered too gifted to be wholesome. The men of his set, being for the most part ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... necessary now to discredit this assumption. It was broken down by the late Sir Henry Irving when he finally shamed the Government into extending to his profession the official recognition enjoyed by the other branches of fine art. To-day we have on the roll of knighthood actors, authors, and managers. The rogue and vagabond theory of the depravity of the theatre is as dead officially as it is in general society; and with it ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... of our flies, though I got several strikes. We searched under the stones for worms and secured a few. Whereupon Romer threw a baited hook to a trout we plainly saw. The trout gobbled it. Romer had been instructed in the fine art of angling, but whenever he got a bite he always forgot science. He yanked this ten-inch rainbow right out. Then in another pool he hooked a big fellow that had ideas of his own as well as weight and strength. Romer applied the same strenuous tactics. But this trout nearly pulled Romer ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... a fine art by the secret service agents of foreign countries," he continued. "Why not take a chance? The simple operation of steaming a letter open is followed by reburnishing the flap with a bone instrument, and no trace is left. I can't do that, for ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... break on the lips are past mending. The effervescence and sparkle of wine can only be known as the glass is filled. The fine art of conversation can be perfected only by choice spirits whose hearts are light, whose sprightly wit, gay good humor and alert intelligence make their ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... flamboyant signboards and typhoid flies. But meanwhile, and always, for that matter, the sensitive soul must learn to adjust itself to circumstances and conditions. This adjustment may in itself become a fine art. It is really the art by which the painter excludes the commonplace and irrelevant from his landscape. Sometimes we have to do this consciously; for the most part, it should be ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... Yorkshire is famed for different branches i' t'fine art line, bud t'music aw think licks t'lump, especially abaght Haworth an' Keighley. Nah Haworth wunce hed a famous singer; he wor considered one o' t'best i' Yorkshire in his time. It is said 'at he ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... Providence only knows; but I never worked there without a consciousness that you might at any moment come down the walk, under the grape-arbor, bestowing glances of approval, that were none the worse for not being critical; exercising a sort of superintendence that elevated gardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was as complimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere which made the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apart for fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright presence that filled ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... distant avian relatives, it watches its chance and slyly drops them into the domicile of its bay-winged cousins, and actually makes them hatch and rear its offspring! This seems to be carrying imposture to the extreme of refinement, or possibly developing it into a fine art, and reminds one of those human good-for-naughts who "sponge" off their relatives rather ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the chief reason for not engaging in this line is the discomfort of isolation, and the lack of comradeship one is sure to suffer. To be gentle, generous, kind; to win by few words; and to disarm criticism and prejudice through the potency of a gracious presence, is a fine art. Books on etiquette will not serve the end, nor studious attempts to smile at the proper time, nor zealous efforts to avoid jostling the whims of those we meet; for to attempt to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... twelfth of a century since the veracious Historian of the imperishable Mackerel Brigade first manoeuvred that incomparably strategical military organization in public, and caused it to illustrate the fine art of waging heroic war upon a life-insurance principle. Equally renowned in arms for its feats and legs, and for being always on hand when any peculiarly daring retrograde movement was on foot, this limber martial ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... The fine art of successful salesmanship cannot be mastered in a few hours of casual reading. You will not be able, immediately after glancing through these books, to unlock every long-desired golden opportunity ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... obtained of all Booksellers and Newsagents. THE PICTURE MAGAZINE, Price Sixpence, Monthly. This new publication, issued from the offices of "The Strand," contains nothing but pictures, and forms an Art Magazine for the General Public. Features:—Fine Art Portraits, Curious Pictures, Humorous Pictures, Pictures of Places, Pictures for Children, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... person with none of these uneasy ambitions, with whom living is a fine art; then one realises what a much more beautiful creation it is than books and pictures. It is a kind of sweet and solemn music. Such a man or woman has time to read, to talk, to write letters, to pay calls, to walk about the farm, to go and sit with tiresome people, to spend long hours ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... period of childhood. The elder brother, James, who died early of consumption, drew well, as did also one or two of the sisters. It would seem therefore, when we recall Thomas Hood's aptitudes and frequent miscellaneous practice in the same line, that a certain tendency towards fine art, as well as towards literature, ran in the family. The consumption which killed James appears to have been inherited from his mother; she, and two of her daughters, died of the same disease; and a pulmonary affection of a somewhat different kind became, as we shall see, one of the poet's most ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Fronde. She sought to gather all that was most distinguished, whether for wit, beauty, talent, or birth, into an atmosphere of refinement and simple elegance, which should tone down all discordant elements and raise life to the level of a fine art. There was a strongly intellectual flavor in the amusements, as well as in the discussions of this salon, and the place of honor was given to genius, learning, and good manners, rather than to rank. ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... fabrics, watch the weaver twine His cunning wefts. Though still," she said, "think not I scorn thy gifts, Prince Eblis; for I wot Their worth is greater than my tongue can say." Then Eblis deeper in the cave led her a little way, And showed a stately screen of such fine art One almost felt the breeze that seemed to part The pictured boughs. And o'er the stirless lake Dreamed the swift, wimpling waters sudden brake Among the willows on its brink—and flowers Of scarlet, shining-clean from summer showers; And Eblis said, "Cold praise a ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... a minute," said the lapidary; "it is so far opened that the hoop spins round, but it must not be taken off until it cools. The lady may lift it then with care. I have done this job as a piece of fine art; I have no wish to ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... presented to that of the young girl whom they praised so highly, struck him as being most interesting. Here were two men who had made comic dances a profound and serious study, and the two women who had lifted dancing to the plane of a fine art, all envying and complimenting a girl who was doing for her own pleasure that which was to them hard work and a livelihood. But while they were going back the next day to be applauded and petted and praised by a friendly public, ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... prisons from the frequent descriptions given to them by John Adams, and especially from a drawing made by him, years ago, on the back of an old letter, representing a full-rigged man-of-war. This masterpiece of fine art had been nailed up on the walls of John Adams's hut, and had been fully expounded to each child in succession, as soon after its birth as was consistent with ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... had a strength and dignity which marked him out among men and the daughter sensed his strength. She was right in that. In his way the man was inspired. Under his eye the trivialities of plough-making had become the details of a fine art. In the factory he never lost the air of command which inspires confidence. Foremen running into the office filled with excitement because of a break in the machinery or an accident to a workman returned to do his bidding quietly and efficiently. Salesmen ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... probability, infected by the universal passion, without possessing the requisite talents. One of the most renowned tragic poets of this age was the famous Asinius Pollio, a man of a violently impassioned disposition, as Pliny informs us, and who was fond of whatever bore the same character in works of fine art. It was he who brought with him from Rhodes, and erected at Rome, the well-known group of the Farnese Bull. If his tragedies bore the same relation to those of Sophocles, which this bold, wild, but somewhat overwrought group does to the calm sublimity of the Niobe, we have every reason to regret ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... the aim or end meets in the material, and it is only because the whole serves the parts that the parts adapt themselves to the end. The political artist has to treat his material—man—with a very different kind of respect from that shown by the artist of fine art to his work. He must spare man's peculiarity and personality, not to produce a deceptive effect on the senses, but objectively and out of consideration for ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... inconspicuous image of a handsome young man of a good fortune travelling in proper style, whom the landlord will forget in twelve hours—and the chambermaid perhaps remember, God bless her! with a sigh. This is the very fine art of dress.' ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... revelations, and, blending them with the contributions of humbler folk—for all of us dream our dreams—provides in myth and legend and tale, as well as in manifold other art-forms, a stimulus to the inspiration of future generations. For most purposes fine art, at any rate during its more rudimentary stages, may be studied in ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... past the statues on the landing, and the paintings on the walls, to find dinner laid on round tables out there, I remember. A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls. She considers this practice embarrassing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... greater difference between these old bone skates and the "acmes" and club skates of to-day, than there is between the skating of the Middle Ages and the artistic and graceful movements of good performers of to-day. Indeed, skating as a fine art is entirely a thing of modern growth. So little thought of was the exercise, that for long after Fitzstephen's day we find few or no allusions to it, and up to the Restoration days it appears to have been an amusement confined chiefly to the lower classes, among whom it never reached ...
— Harper's Young People, January 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... this so-called aestheticism and crude speculation upon the proper development of architecture as a fine art, I believe the reformers of the Queen Anne school have honestly attempted to improve and elevate the standard of our domestic buildings. At all events, they have brought into the ranks of the profession life and nerve, elements absolutely necessary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... journey and spend a lot of money, when the Riviera is within a shilling cab-fare? Why not apply at 148, New Bond Street, and obtain one of the Fine Art Society's "excursion coupons," and get yourself personally conducted by Mr. JOHN FULLEYLOVE to Nice, Monte Carlo, Genoa, and all sorts of delightful places? Take Mr. Punch's advice, and go there at once! And, when you have exhausted the Riviera, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... quivering, mobile nostrils of the humorist. The swell of the gourmand's paunch beneath the soutane was proof that the cure was a true Norman he had not passed a lifetime in these fertile gardens forgetful of the fact that the fine art of good living is the one indulgence the Church has left to ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... packed as they were in huge wooden cases. It was splendid exercise as a change from stable-work. Weather melting hot; but every one was in the highest spirits; though we blundered tediously through the job, for we had no experience in the fine art of moving heavy weights by hand. I forgot to take note of my sensations on first setting foot on African soil, as I was groaning under a case of something terribly heavy at ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... shown others the most artistic way to steal. I've shown men and women how to make stealing a fine art, and I've been in with them in the game. Indeed, it was my game. Madalena de Santiago, and the two men you knew first as the 'watchers,' then as Torrance and Morello, now as Charrington and Char, have been no more than the pawns I used, ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... any extent as a fine art—and the various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the getting-up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are also varieties of material which are rich in good effects. Unbolted flour, ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... matter, paint, dye, wash, distemper, stain; medium; mordant; oil paint &c (painting) 556. V. color, dye, tinge, stain, tint, tinct^, paint, wash, ingrain, grain, illuminate, emblazon, bedizen, imbue; paint &c (fine art) 556. Adj. colored &c v.; colorific^, tingent^, tinctorial^; chromatic, prismatic; full-colored, high-colored, deep-colored; doubly-dyed; polychromatic; chromatogenous^; tingible^. bright, vivid, intense, deep; fresh, unfaded^; rich, gorgeous; gay. gaudy, florid; gay, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cultivated to any extent as a fine art,—and the various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the getting-up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are also varieties ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... somewhat discomfited. I then hurried to some of the streets leading off from Beggars' Bridge, a place which is, as its name suggests, the headquarters for beggars. Strange as it may seem, there is a guild of beggars in Peking, with an acknowledged king; their profession in the East is a fine art. There are interesting thoroughfares leading out from this bridge,—one, a Curio Street, where every conceivable article can be found, and the other, Bookseller Street. This last was a disappointment, as I was ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the art. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the Italian painters were the most accomplished men of their age. The greatest of them were men of encyclopaedical acquirements and powers, like the great men of Greece. But in their times fine art was, to men's feelings and conceptions, among the grandest things in which a human being could excel; and by it men were made, what only political or military distinction now makes them, the companions of sovereigns, and the equals of the highest nobility. ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill
... the brotherhood. And besides all this, he was reveling in his first taste of luxury; he had fallen under the spell. His capricious instincts awoke; for the first time in his life he drank exquisite wines, this was his first experience of cookery carried to the pitch of a fine art. A minister, a duke, and an opera-dancer had joined the party of journalists, and wondered at their sinister power. Lucien felt a horrible craving to reign over these kings, and he thought that he had power to win his kingdom. Finally, there was this Coralie, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... pigment, coloring matter, paint, dye, wash, distemper, stain; medium; mordant; oil paint &c. painting 556. V. color, dye, tinge, stain, tint, tinct[obs3], paint, wash, ingrain, grain, illuminate, emblazon, bedizen, imbue; paint &c. (fine art) 556. Adj. colored &c. v.; colorific[obs3], tingent[obs3], tinctorial[obs3]; chromatic, prismatic; full-colored, high-colored, deep-colored; doubly- dyed; polychromatic; chromatogenous[obs3]; tingible[obs3]. bright, vivid, intense, deep; fresh, unfaded[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is a fine art with them, they've carried it so far. Last winter they lived in a very good two-story house, and as it was a very bitter season and Mr. L.D.W. was "kinder run down, someway," he very ingeniously burnt it for fuel while they were living in it,—first the partitions in the second ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... bit of Socialism, very sensible and very quietly put. 'How can we have fine art when the worker is condemned to monotonous and mechanical labour in the midst of dull or hideous surroundings, when cities and nature are sacrificed to commercial greed, when cheapness is the god of Life?' In old days the craftsman was a designer; he had his 'prentice days of quiet study; ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... He was not skilled in the fine art of social deception. He could only gaze stupidly and with blinking eyes upon his questioner, devoutly hoping meanwhile that the tears ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... not. I hate grand dinners. Fancy making a fine art of eating, and studying one's menu beforehand to see what combination of dishes will harmonise best with one's internal economy. And then the names of the things are always better than the things themselves. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... sympathy with the temporal power, which was a denial of the revolutionary theory which asserted the Papacy to be without friends in Europe. Wholesale murder by explosives was in its infancy then as a fine art; but the spirit was willing, and a plot was formed to blow up the castle of Sant' Angelo and the barracks of the Zouaves. The castle escaped because one of the conspirators lost heart and revealed the treachery; but the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... remarkable; and the same may be said of Mr. Stuart. South Australia has two good administrators in Messrs. Morgan and Bray. The latter has developed during his Premiership abilities for which no one had given him credit. As a leader of the House, he has raised tact to the dignity of a fine art. Mr. Patterson seems to me the ablest of the Victorian Radicals. Mr. Parsons, of Adelaide, should also make his mark. In Mr. Ward, South Australia possesses the most brilliant speaker in the colonies but he has not sufficient application or steadiness to become ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... In Mme. Recamier's salon, I have read, at the time when conversation was yet a fine art in Paris, guests famous for esprit would sit in the twilight round the stove, whilst each in turn let fly some sparkling anecdote or bon-mot, which rose and shone and died out into silence, till the next of the elect pyrotechnists was ready. ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... thus early given was not confined to forms. Indeed, French society in that day was probably less formal in some ways than any other European society; and in Paris people were more free than in the provinces. Although making a bow was a fine art, although a lady's curtsey was expected to be at once "natural, soft, modest, gracious, and dignified," ceremonious greetings were considered unnecessary, and few compliments were paid. To praise a woman's beauty to her face would have been to disparage her modesty. Good manners consisted ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... made no great stir, however. They were not connoisseurs of good blood and sleek coats at the Bar L outfit. They were busy folks who most needed tough animals that could lope off fifty miles at a stretch. They wanted horses whose education included the fine art of knowing when to settle back on the rope and dig in toes. It was not a question as to how fast you could do your seven furlongs. It was more important to know if you could make yourself ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... a fine art, and Erasmus was heir to most of the instincts of the order. His associations with the laity were mostly with the nobility or those with money. He was not slow in asking for what he wanted, whether it was a fur-lined cloak, a saddle, top riding-boots, ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... circumference of the structure is about one-third of a mile. From the arena rise the tiers of seats, one above another, indicated by partially preserved steps and passage-ways. In its prime it was doubtless elegantly ornamented; and some evidences of fine art still remain upon the crumbling and lofty walls. The material is a kind of freestone. The style of architecture embraces four orders, imposed one upon another: the lower one is Tuscan or Doric; the second, Roman-Ionic; and the third and fourth, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... stones in this garden of God, where He raises souls, I often fancy that this old dialect is written in their rhythmic lines. The yew-trees were planted by law, lang-syne, to yield bows to the realm, and now archery is dead and Martini-Henry has taken its place, but the yews still live, and the Runic fine art of the twisted lines on the tombs, after a thousand years' sleep, is beginning to revive. Every thing at such a time speaks of joy and resurrection—tree and tomb and bird ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... their apparatus seems the most delicate and consummate. Apparently a fine play of muscle, a subtle shifting of the power along the outstretched wings, a perpetual loss and a perpetual recovery of the equipoise, sustains them and bears them along. With them flying is a luxury, a fine art; not merely a quicker and safer means of transit from one point to another, but a gift so free and spontaneous that work becomes leisure and movement rest. They are not so much going somewhere, from this perch to that, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... [his moustache drooping ominously]. I am sorry to have to report to the Inca that you have no soul for fine art. [He rises sulkily.] The position of daughter-in-law to the Inca is not compatible with the tastes of a pig. [He attempts to take ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... remembered that she had never been rich, and had learned in early youth many a lesson, many a shift of economy which now stood her in good stead. The Germans have a right to be proud of having elevated thrift to a fine art. From the Emperor to the schoolmaster, from the administration of the greatest military force the world has ever seen to the housekeeping of the meanest peasant, a sober appreciation of the value of money is the prime rule by which everything is regulated. Frau von Sigmundskron ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... behind Cleopatra's seat). Caesar, what you say has an Olympian ring in it: it must be right; for it is fine art. But I am still on the side of Cleopatra. If we must die, she shall not want the devotion of a man's heart nor the ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... study of Zen. Again, it was made use of by the teachers of popular[FN106] ethics, who did a great deal in the education of the lower classes. In this way Zen and its peculiar taste gradually found its way into the arts of peace, such as literature, fine art, tea-ceremony, cookery, gardening, architecture, and at last it has permeated through every fibre ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... obligations, and deny that the writing or performance of a play is a moral act, to be treated on exactly the same footing as theft or murder if it produces equally mischievous consequences. I am convinced that fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... to write a biographical account of my brother, nor to estimate the range or value of his powers and performances in fine art and in literature. I agree with those who think that a brother is not the proper person to undertake a work of this sort. An outsider can do it dispassionately, though with imperfect knowledge of the facts; a friend can do ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... the time and place. The list of murders reached appalling dimensions. The times were sadly out of joint. The legislature was corrupt, graft was rampant—though then unknown by that name—and the entire social body was restless, discontented, and uneasy. Politics had become a fine art. The judiciary, lazy and corrupt, was held in contempt. The dockets of the courts were full, and little was done to clear them effectively. Criminals did as they liked and went unwhipped of justice. It was truly a ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... literature, politics, and a thousand specialised distractions tend to "saturate our limited attention," and to absorb our energies, to the detriment of our feeling for nature and of our enjoyment of her beauties. And yet it is only by keeping in living touch with nature that fine art can renew its inspiration or scale ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... up the idea, Mr. Lawrence?" asked his employer. "House finishing and furnishing is fast coming to be a fine art. An intelligent, harmonious beauty is demanded. We are leaving behind the complacency of mere money in our adornments, and asking for something that evinces thought and refinement. I am sure you could succeed if you once set about ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... word, never.' 'Die,' cries Balfour of Burley to the villain in 'Old Mortality.' 'Die, hoping nothing, believing nothing—' 'And fearing nothing,' replies the other. This is the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the great worthies of antiquity. The man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band. They are afraid of making fools of themselves, and ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... late guide was in the middle of them. The light was so bad that I was unable to see more than this. It was plain that we had to deal with an organised gang of criminals. Thugs who practised their trade as a fine art. Despite all proverbs the foreseen is what generally happens; and our amazing advent in their midst created a sort of panic whereby we took advantage. The Celestials carried knives, but they dared not use them, because the light ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Canadian parties to the great Imperial drive thought of Sir Wilfrid's dilatory, evasive and blocking tactics is not a matter of surmise. Upon this point they did not practise the fine art of reticence; and their angry expostulations are to be found in the pages of Hansard, in the editorial pages of the Conservative press, in the political literature of the time, in heavy condemnatory ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... "the great Brockton," gentleman and tipster. "Amusement enough!" Yes, niggers, harpists, Christy Minstrels, strong men, acrobats, agile clowns and girls on stilts, and all the ragamuffins from "the Burrer," bent on "making a bit." African Jungle? A shooting gallery with model lions and bears. Fine Art Exhibition? A picture of the hanging of recent murderers. Boxing Ring? Yes, for women—they strip to the waist and fight like fiends. Then look at the lady auctioneer selling ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... what was in it without Dr. Harris knowing it," he remarked. "Now, the secret service agents abroad have raised letter-opening to a fine art. Some kinds of paper can be steamed open without leaving a trace, and then they follow that simple operation by reburnishing the flap with a bone instrument. But that won't do. It might ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... in writing a name in a book. Penmanship was almost a fine art in colonial days, the one indispensable accomplishment of a school teacher; and he was often hired to exercise it in writing a name "perspicuously" in a book. Sometimes the owner's name is seen drawn with much care in a ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... intellect and keen wit of the Alexandrians, combined with the choicest viands of the luxurious capital, where the wines and dainties of all the countries of the Mediterranean found sellers and buyers, and the cook's vocation was developed into a fine art, to spice this banquet with a hundred charms for the mind and senses. To-day the principal place in this distinguished circle of famous men, great and wealthy nobles, beautiful and aristocratic women, was awarded to the blind sculptor. He was pledged by every one who had admired ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... inspiring its possessor with a belief in his merits, that is productive of good resolutions, enables him to employ in relation to himself the fine art ...
— Poise: How to Attain It • D. Starke
... of this valuable repertory of literary, scientific, and fine art information during the last quarter of ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... in every branch of study and in every trade. It was a lady who took the prize at "the Exposition" for the most beautiful piece of cabinet-work. This is said to have been a marvel of beauty and extraordinary as a specimen of fine art. She was a foreigner; a Scandinavian, I believe. Another lady is a teacher of wood-carving. We have physicians, and there are two attorneys, Perry and Martin, now practicing in the city of Chicago. Representatives of our sex are also to be found among real-estate agents and ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... picture is reproduced at page 108, by permission of the Fine Art Company. It contains portraits of most of the ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... voice, "don't you agree with me that it would have been barbarous to destroy them? Wonderful, aren't they? Who would credit a demure American schoolgirl with their supreme art? A French court lady might have written them, in a day when folks made a fine art of love and weren't afraid ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... have been a drawback to him at school where time on his hands was, for lack of better material, frequently spent in reading all the foolish romances he could lay hold of in the neighbouring book-shops. His own early romances showed the influence of this bad literature. Of course, then as now, fine art was a sealed book to the young student. It is difficult to fancy what Shelley might have been under different early influences, and whether perchance the gain to himself might not have been a loss to ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the instrument used, the "fude," "brush." This same brush answers for writing. It admits of strong, bold outlines; and a large brush allows the exhibition of no slight degree of skill. As a result, "writing" is a fine art in Japan. Hardly a family that makes any pretense at culture but owns one or more framed specimens of writing. In Japan these rank as pictures do or mottoes in the West, and are prized not merely for the sentiment ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... pass. Yet it has had increasing sway now for some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen—among the more educated class at least—that quarrels little, regards the function as a vice or a nuisance, as the East-ender does a taste for fine art or literature. We seem indeed to be getting altogether out of the way of it. Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone, but rare quarrelling is no quarrelling at all. Like beer, smoking, sea-bathing, cycling, and the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... at hand. On the other hand, the value of surgical nursing depends on relative perfection of detail and rigorous adherence to the set rules of prophylaxis, whereas other nursing often requires that judgment which only experience can give. Surgery is a fine art that has reached a high degree of development in the treatment of facts, about which good surgeons are generally right. A great deal of noise is made over surgeons' occasional mistakes, which are advertised by their detractors, but we hear little ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... looking and behaving as if nothing unusual had occurred? For Sally had an honest and profound conviction that she had no talent for deception. How could she realize that she belonged to the type of women with whom dissimulation is a fine art once the exigencies of a situation required it? She had come to one definite conclusion, she would not betray the presence of the runaway soldier in the chateau for at least another twenty-four hours. She would take him food the next day and he might have the opportunity to attempt ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... murder should be a fine art. But the Borgias—only amateurs! The far-famed Aqua Tofana—pooh! Any chemist will put it up for ten cents. Only be careful how you use it. Chemical analysis has advanced somewhat since the day of the divine Lucrezia, and a jury would ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... be well if all students would keep clearly in their mind the real distinction between those words which we use so often, "Manufacture," "Art," and "Fine Art." "MANUFACTURE" is, according to the etymology and right use of the word, "the making of anything by hands,"—directly or indirectly, with or without the help of instruments or machines. Anything proceeding from the hand of man is manufacture; but it must have proceeded from his hand only, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... your money back!" she advised Mary on the doorstep. "I don't say go to her, for she'd only tell you some lie. 'Lie and let lie' is her motto. She's reduced lying to a fine art. But ask him for your capital, my dear, and watch his face when you do it. Compared to his wife he's a model, even if it's a model of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and alchemy with commentaries, fourteen on astrology and divination, three on chemistry (the composition of incense), eight on gnomic poetry and ethics, one encyclopaedia, six lives of the Saints, six works on the Tibetan language and five on painting and fine art. Cordier gives further particulars of the medical works in B.E.F.E.O. 1903, p. 604. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... way desirable Fancy's Show-Box Faust "Fanshawe" abstract of passages from Fearing, Master, and Hawthorne Fielding, Henry Fields, J. T., mistake of Fine Art, Hawthorne's way of looking at Fire worship First Church of Salem First publication by Hawthorne Foote, Caleb Fouque French and ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... how to draw it out: indeed it will require a great deal of holy skill to do it; it requires wisdom to draw out the excellencies of a man: "Counsel in the heart of a man is deep, but a man of understanding will draw it out." It is a fine art to be able to pierce a man, that is like a vessel full of wine, and set him a running; but to draw out influence and virtue from the Lord Jesus is one of the most secret hidden mysteries in the life of a Christian: indeed we may complain, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... with impotent rage at the sight of these enormities, callously inflicted, and silently borne by these miserable victims. Nor is it only women who are the victims, although their fate is the most tragic. Those firms which reduce sweating to a fine art, who systematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay, who grind the faces of the poor, and who rob the widow and the orphan, and who for a pretence make great professions of public spirit and philanthropy, these men nowadays are ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... in the use of the axe. It may be said that a fine tree is in the way of the dwelling. Perhaps the proposed dwelling is in the way of the tree. In England the work of "groving," or thinning out trees, is carried to the perfection of a fine art. One shudders at the havoc which might be made by a stolid laborer. Indeed, to nearly all who could be employed in preparing a wooded acre for habitation, a tree would be looked upon as little more than so much ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... that "it has no interest of passion or mental power." But even this fatal conclusion is diluted by a dependent clause. "Possibly," says the reviewer, "the good feeling of the intertwined love story may conciliate the good-will of some of the malcontent." One could hardly carry further the fine art of oscillating between moderate commendation and parenthetical damnation—an art that lends a factitious air of judicial impartiality and mental equipoise. Beyond question, The Nation is one of the ablest weekly ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... the result is here a partly accidental one, and not a matter of art. But domestic architecture is only half-way a fine art. It does not aim at a beauty of the monumental kind, as a statue, a triumphal arch, or even a temple does. Its primary aim is shelter, to house man in nature,—and it forms, as it were, the connecting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... lingered until the departure of the last couple—a plainly dressed man whose clothes on inspection revealed marvels of fineness and harmonious color; a quietly dressed woman whose costume from tip of plume to tip of suede slipper was a revelation of how fine a fine art the toilet can ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Ireland where majorities, one way or the other, are often very narrow, electioneering has been raised almost to a fine art. A nephew of mine was the Unionist candidate for a certain city in the North of Ireland during the 1911 election. Here again it was certain that his majority could only be a very small one, and as is the custom in Ulster every individual ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... legally entitled to benefit by it, makes no difference in this inference. Scions of patrician families imbibed their lessons from the skilled voluptuaries of Greece and the Levant and in their intrigues with the wantons of those climes, they learned to lavish wealth as a fine art. Upon their return to Rome they were but ill-pleased with the standard of entertainment offered by the ruder and less sophisticated native talent; they imported Greek and Syrian mistresses. 'Wealth increased, its ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... to a poor relation. The steers look round at him, wonder, in a vague way, if he's worth eating, and stand at ease. An old freighter who's been over the "divide" and got his profanity down to a fine art, grabs that goad, cracks it like a rifled cannon reaching for a raw recruit and spills a string of cuss words calculated to precipitate the final conflagration. You expect to see him struck dead—but those steers don't. They're firmly persuaded that he's going to outlive 'em if they don't ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... special value to Englishmen. Except in poetry our English contribution to the life of the arts in Europe has been comparatively small. That very Puritanism which had so much to do with the greatness of Milton has also had much to do with the general failure of Englishmen to produce fine art, or even to care about it, or so much as recognize it when they see it. Now Milton, Puritan as he was, was always, and not least in his final Puritan phase, a supreme artist. Poetry has been by far our greatest artistic achievement and he is by far our greatest poetic artist. ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... were represented by a federal priest, games were given like those of the Roman city-festival; we are, however, no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests, how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in attaining a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual communities. On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation of learned lumber, particularly of a theological and astrological nature, by virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... purpose in this school, to treat architecture as a fine art and not merely as the science of construction, and to this end instruction in the general history of the Fine Arts and practice in design are made the central features about which the ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Volume 01, No. 08, August 1895 - Fragments of Greek Detail • Various
... considered a fine art in those days, an accomplishment which has largely gone out of style since the introduction of dinner a la Russe. A law existed in Putnam County, in which Cold Spring is situated, which forbade the killing ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... in October four courses of lectures, one by Dr S. R. Gardiner on English history, were given in Whitechapel. The Barnetts were also associated with the building of model dwellings, with the establishment of the children's country holiday fund and the annual loan exhibitions of fine art at the Whitechapel gallery. In 1884 an article by Mr Barnett in the Nineteenth Century discussed the question of university settlements. This resulted in July in the formation of the University Settlements Association, and when ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... high art, at least, does not pay in our part of the tropics. Regardless of posterity, therefore, we abandon the sublime, and offer our art services for anything that may present itself. A bona fide painter is a rarity in the town I am describing, so Nicasio and I are comparatively alone in the fine art field. Our patrons are numerous, but we are expected by them to be as versatile as the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... volumes—roxburghe calf—yet he knows his way about in that whimsical, discursive, but ever satisfying writer, who will write on anything, or any person, always with freshness and in good English, from the character of Judas Iscariot and "Murder as a Fine Art" to the Lake Poets—there never was a Lake school—and the Essenes. He has much to say on Homer, and a good deal also on "Flogging in Schools"; he can hardly let go Immanuel Kant, but if he does ...
— Books and Bookmen • Ian Maclaren
... interested in other people's concerns; and they are grand laughers. Even the dullest warm to something approaching wit when surrounded by that appreciative audience of three. They don't talk much themselves, but they have made of listening a fine art." ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... The Jennings theory was that he was a great teacher; that there were only a very few serious and worth-while seekers of the singing art; that in order to live and to teach these few, he had to receive the others; that, anyhow, singing was a fine art for anyone to have and taking singing lessons made the worst voice a little less bad—or, at the least, singing was splendid for the health. One of his favorite dicta was, "Every child should be taught singing—for its health, if for nothing ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... graceful and beautiful in itself. She was so superior in this point to her sex generally, that, having found that which was undoubtedly her own proper individual costume, she never changed the fashion of it. Her dress deserved to be called (what all dress should be) a lesser fine art, and seemed the proper expression in clothes of her personality, and really a part of herself. It was a long, open robe, over an underskirt of the same material and color (always moonlight silver gray, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... their eyes:—finally, the opera of the 'Muses Gallantes', and that even of the 'Devin'; a motet I had composed for Mademoiselle Fel, and which she had sung at the spiritual concert; the frequent conferences I had had upon this fine art with the first composers, all seemed to prevent or dissipate a doubt of such a nature. This however existed even at the Chevrette, and in the mind of M. d'Epinay himself. Without appearing to observe it, I undertook to compose him a motet for the dedication of ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... must have certain qualities which belong to all literature as a fine art, whether it is the literature of knowledge or the literature of power. Literature is not the book nor is it life; but literature is the sense of life, whose artist is the author, and the medium he uses is words, language. It is good art when his sense of life is truth, ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... given from modern English life, to exalt the conception of youthful dignity and sweetness in every household. I know nothing among the phenomena of the present age more sorrowful than that the beauty of our youth should remain wholly unrepresented in Fine Art, because unfelt by ourselves; and that the only vestiges of a likeness to it should be in some of the more subtle passages of caricatures, popular (and justly popular) as much because they were the only attainable reflection of the prettiness, as because they were the only ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the military traffic along a road, demoralising a battery or a transport train and causing as much damage through congestion of traffic as with their actual machine-gun fire. Aerial photography, too, became a fine art; the ordinary long focus cameras were used at the outset with automatic plate changers, but later on photographing aeroplanes had cameras of wide angle lens type built into the fuselage. These were very simply operated, one lever registering the exposure and changing the plate. In many cases, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... with hide headbands. The kilt-tunics of coarse material, duplicating samples brought from the past, were harsh to the skin and poorly fitting. But the workmanship of their link-and-plate bronze belts, the sleek bow guards strapped to their wrists, and the bows themselves approached fine art. Ashe's round cloak was the blue of a master trader, and he wore wealth in a necklace of polished wolf's teeth alternating with amber beads. Ross's more modest position in the tribe was indicated not only by his red-brown cloak, ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton |
