"Work of art" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Zurich also I read your article on "Tannhauser" in the Journal des Debats. What have you done in it? You wished to describe my opera to the people, and instead of that you have yourself produced a true work of art. Just as you conducted the opera, so have you written about it: new, all new, and from your inner self. When I put the article down, my first thoughts were these: "This wonderful man can do or undertake nothing without producing his own self from ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... clearly stamped upon them, that they could never have been designed by one person, and executed by another. The humblest article—a buckle for a lady's girdle, a seal, a locket, a brooch, a ring, or a button—became in his hands a beautiful work of art. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... to come to sinful men with patient pleading and remonstrance, that it may enter their hearts and give its blessings. We are familiar with a modern work of art in which that long-suffering appeal is wonderfully portrayed. He who is the Light of the world stands, girded with the royal mantle clasped with the priestly breastplate, bearing in His hand the lamp of truth, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... ears, and frowning forth immitigably at any Englishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General's expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived to misremember, and twist it wrong end foremost into something like an English victory. They have caught ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... precipitated from a height of 70 feet by a single leap into the lake, and projected to such a distance that a boat may pass beneath the fall and the rock perfectly dry. The Doric Arch has all the appearance of a work of art, and consists of an isolated mass of sandstone, with four pillars supporting an entablature of stone, covered with soil, and a beautiful grove of pine and spruce trees, some of which are 60 feet in height."—Montgomery Martin's History of Canada, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... after it, almost every day; and with the boy's marvellous memory and the father's skill, and the delicious profusion of fresh material which Newton kept finding in every corner of the workshop, it grew steadily, till it was a little work of art in its way. There were the ups and downs, the crooked old roads and lanes and the straight new streets, the little wooden cottages and the big brick houses, and there was the grassy common with its trees and its tiny ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford
... sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to think at times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, but on account of the fuller variety of its appeal, soul speaking ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... cried Mrs. Bowser, while the rest murmured in the effort to admire the work of art. "And is that ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... familiarity with nudity in art is at the same time an aid to the attainment of a proper attitude towards purity in nature. "He who has once learnt," as Hoeller remarks, "to enjoy peacefully nakedness in art, will be able to look on nakedness in nature as on a work of art." ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... translucent, stiff and white, retaining the complete form of the original egg. A score of streaked and knotted lines run from the top to the base. It is the wizard's pointed cap, the mitre with the grooves carved into jewelled chaplets. All said, the Cabbage-caterpillar's birth-casket is an exquisite work of art. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... "we" I mean intelligent people under sixty—that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves. Unluckily, the matter does not end there: a rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... composer, who is incidentally the chief virtuoso of the world, dashes off a gorgeous composition, and in the first warmth of enthusiasm plays it to his companion. She, desirous of asserting her importance, listens to it with that frame of mind which makes it easy to criticise any work of art ever created—the desire to find fault. Benevolent and sincere as her intentions may have been, the criticisms of this shallow and musically untrained woman must have driven Liszt ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... semblance of a monkey. "Sweet creature!" he added, kissing the object of his affection, and holding it out at arm's-length. "Silent companion of my solitary rambles, and patient auditor of my most secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that upper lip ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... which was painted in Egypt, by one of the artists who accompanied Napoleon thither, and is beyond comparison the most highly finished and beautiful that we have ever seen, and gives an idea of the aspect of that country, which no other work of art could convey. Another opera, which attracted our attention, was called "Ossian, ou les Bardes." One of the scenes, where the heroes and heroines of departed times are seen seated on the clouds, displayed a degree of magnificence which made it a fit representation of "the dream ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... on and for superstitious men to be enslaved by. This distinction is radical; it cuts the world of Art, as the equator does the earth, with an unswerving line, on one side or the other of which every work of Art falls, and which permits no neutral ground, no chance of compromise;—he who is not for the truth is against it. We will not be so illiberal as to say that Art lies only on one side of this line; to do so were to shut out works which have given us exceeding ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... that spark commonly known as genius, without which, cultivation, strictly speaking, is impossible, there being nothing to cultivate. We find that the most ardent admiration for the Violin regarded as a work of art, has ever been found to emanate from those who possessed tastes for kindred arts. Painters, musicians, and men of refined minds have generally been foremost among the admirers of the Violin. Much interest attaches to it ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... than any cup of tea? And what will be your sensations as you undo the parcel, take out the treasure (which you once saw in Johnson's catalogue for L3), turn eagerly to its title-page, and collate it as gently as though you were handling some priceless work of art? Don't tell me! The specialist gets a thousand times more pleasure out of his hobby than ever did casual buyer. Besides, what rapture will be his whenever he chance upon some book for which he has long been searching, or upon some work on his very subject and yet unknown ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the resolution respecting that inimitable work. We are accustomed to make a distinction between works of nature and works of art, but in a sense which, all will readily understand, this is preeminently both. As a work of art, it bears upon it, throughout, the stamp of original and varied genius. And yet, throughout, it equally bears the impress of nature—of human nature—in its worst and its best, and all its intermediate phases. The man who has read that little volume without laughing and crying alternately—without ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in hand, to experts in every branch, and had recourse to the best architect, the best surgeon, the greatest connoisseur in pictures or statues, the cleverest lawyer, when he wished to build a house, to attend to his health, to purchase a work of art or an estate. But as there are no recognized experts in intrigue, no connoisseurs in love affairs, a banker finds himself in difficulties when he is in love, and much puzzled as to the management of a woman. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... some say, to study poetry artistically alone, contemplating it as a work of art, and not allowing it to excite the affections or the passions, there is no kind of poetry that might not be enjoyed with safety in any state of mind: it is doubtful, however, whether any work of art ought ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... equal to this effort,—and enough remains to make it a very possible one—he had better stick to the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Exhibitions. It should go without saying that a work of art, if considered at all, must be held to be as it was when first completed. If we could see Gaudenzio Ferrari's Crucifixion Chapel with its marvellous frescoes as strong and fresh in colour as they were three centuries and a half ago, and with its nearly thirty life- sized human figures and ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... Marcella, looking at her watch. "Tell me the names again, dear lady"—she bent forward, and laid her hand affectionately on Mrs. Allison's knee. "Your parties are always a work of art." ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... (1607-1669); and the philological reputation of the country was sustained by Grotius, Vossius and the elder Heinsius. And yet, though Rembrandt's "Nightwatch" is dated the very year after the publication of the Meditations, not a word in Descartes breathes of any work of art or historical learning. The contempt of aesthetics and erudition is characteristic of the most typical members of what is known as the Cartesian school, especially Malebranche. Descartes was not in any ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... thing which we possess, known as the "Alfred Jewel": it has on it an inscription which we can truly say applies to far more than this work of art. Its application to Alfred's work is indeed a ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... should throw all The rest in the shade, by the gracious bestowal On myself, after twenty or thirty rejections, Of those fossil remains which she called her "affections," And that rather decayed but well-known work of art Which Miss Flora persisted in styling her "heart." So we were engaged. Our troth had been plighted, Not by moonbeam or starbeam, by fountain or grove, But in a front parlor, most brilliantly lighted, Beneath ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... oil to make it dry rapidly, it would be some days before the picture would be sufficiently dry to be touched. Cacama, however, sent it off the next morning under charge of his principal scribe to Montezuma, who sent back word that he was astonished, indeed, at this work of art, which seemed to him to be almost magical; and he sent, in return, a large golden goblet to Roger, ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... semi-poetic constructions, they are permeated with imagination not only in the general conception, but also in the numberless details of its application. Such are the "fulgurations" of Leibniz, those very rich digressions of Schopenhauer, etc. They have the fascination of a work of art as much as that of science, and this is no longer questioned by metaphysicians themselves;[118] they ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... had been known up to that period; nor has her peer been found since. She excelled even the celebrated Ascham and Davies, both in the number and variety of styles. Her copy of the Book of Proverbs is perhaps her most elaborate work of art, and is a marvel for the ingenious combination of writing, of which there are forty specimens, and fine pen-and-ink drawings. Every chapter, which is embellished both at the beginning and end with beautiful decorations, is written in a different hand, and ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this way and that and looking at it very critically. It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat. I judged the picture to have a valuable quality of resemblance and to have been painted when the model was about twenty-five years old. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... at once; and the young artist worked with zeal and devotion, for her admiration of the gifted and unfortunate man was intense. She resolved to make the piece valuable as a work of art, for posterity might one day demand the portrait of this gifted man, and her duty as a painter was to represent him ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... Reader, we have reached the point at which some foolish person is sure to interrupt us by declaring that The Rhine Gold is what they call "a work of art" pure and simple, and that Wagner never dreamt of shareholders, tall hats, whitelead factories, and industrial and political questions looked at from the socialistic and humanitarian points of view. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... another; they will not make any great haste away." We steered N.W. by N. for the harbour of Port Desire: The going into this harbour is very remarkable; on the south side lies, one mile in the land, an high peaked-tip rock, much like a tower, looking as though it was a work of art set up for a land-mark to steer into this harbour; this rock is forty feet high. At five o'clock got into the harbour, run up to Seal Island, which lieth about a league up; here we killed more seal in half an hour than we could carry off, being obliged to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... on June 1, Dr. Le Plongeon had the great satisfaction of discovering a monument, a splendid work of art in all its pristine beauty, fresh as when the artist put the finishing touch to it, without blemish, unharmed by time, and not even looked upon by man since it was concealed, ages ago, where Dr. Le Plongeon discovered it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... while, and after meals, Mrs. Orde allowed him a single piece of sponge-cake; no more. But now, Bobby, catching the eye of Celia upon him, grimaced, pantomimed to call attention, and deliberately broke off a big chunk of Mrs. Owen's frosted work of art and proceeded to devour it. Celia's eyes widened with horror; which to Bobby's depraved state of mind was reward enough. Then Mrs. Orde uttered a cry of astonishment; Mrs. Owen a dignified but outraged snort; and ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... Karl, "I could put you up to a thing or two for all that. We live in Modern Europe, you know, and not in ancient Egypt. Now, for instance, why is this beautiful hall, a perfect work of art in its way, so ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... say that art should be despised by the novelist; we only contend that it should not be polluted. We would have every novel a work of art, but the art should be employed on noble subjects, not on indifferent or disgraceful ones. If authors plead a mission to write, it must be to write that which will do good. A Raphael may boast of inspiration when he paints ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... is: In your reading you must have in view some definite aim—some aim other than the wish to derive pleasure. I conceive that to give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters. But the maximum of pleasure can only be obtained by regular effort, and regular effort implies the organisation of that effort. Open-air walking is a glorious exercise; it is the walking ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... work of art more complete in expression than anything that has yet come from him. It is like a cry of the soul, so intense one scarcely realizes whether it is put into ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... translation,—just as common talk sounds finer in a foreign tongue,—yet it is but for a time, and then the inevitable limitations of the counterfeit come in,—its narrowness and fixity,—crude paint for sunbeams, cold and colorless stone for the living form. The only test of a work of Art is, how far it will carry us,—not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... apothecaries—prescribing enormous and unnecessary quantities of medicine, so that the drug-vendors might make heavy bills, and, as a consequence, recommend in all directions such complacent superiors to be called in. Garth's, unfair and violent though it is, nowhere offends against decency. As a work of art it cannot be ranked high, and is now deservedly forgotten, although it has many good lines and some felicitous satire. Garth lived to see the apothecaries gradually emancipate themselves from the ignominious regulations to which they consented when their vocation was first ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... you brutes! Let me up! You've nearly cut my knees off. Oh, you are beastly cads! Do shut up. 'Tisn't a joke!" Beetle's protest was, in tone, a work of art. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... then, Mr. S. Solomon, I say, because a critic pooh-poohs your work of art—your Moses—your child—your foundling. Why, did not a wiseacre in Blackwood's Magazine lately fall foul of "Tom Jones?" O hypercritic! So, to be sure, did good old Mr. Richardson, who could write novels himself—but you, and I, and Mr. Gibbon, my dear sir, agree in giving our respect, and wonder, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more of his true soul, in which he speaks more naively and with a more complete acknowledgment of his real beliefs and the bases of his hopes. To pass over the Chaldaean tomb in silence because it is a mediocre work of art would be to turn a blind eye to the whole of one side of the life of a great people, a people whose role in the development of the ancient civilization was such as to demand that we should leave no stone unturned to make ourselves ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... thousand copies in its three-volume form. Lockhart, perhaps with one of the few but graceful escapes of national predilection (it ought not to be called prejudice) to be noticed in him, pronounces this a greater work of art, but a less in genius than its purely Scottish predecessors. As there is nothing specially English in Ivanhoe, but only an attempt to delineate Normans and Saxons before the final blend was formed, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far we are from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... February 28, I was present at the first performance of Les Huguenots, an opera which enchanted me. The action, the music, the stage setting, the interpretation, made an ensemble that was unique, a work of art that defied comparison. Nothing on the stage to my mind, has ever surpassed the duet in the fourth act as created and sung by Nourrit and Mlle. Falcon. Inspired by the musical and dramatic situation, these two artists ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... people are conversing, with ears on the alert and an anxious expression; sometimes it is an old father who thanks you with a glance for a kindly word said in passing, or assumes a despairing expression at the epigram which you hurl at a work of art and which strikes a heart behind you. A face not to be omitted surely, if ever some painter in love with things modern should conceive the idea of reproducing on canvas that perfectly typical manifestation of Parisian life, the ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... world, from life, and from the events of all ages. He also utilizes the progress of science for the mechanism of his art. But, to transform the material into a complete picture, with a unity of action, where the different sentiments harmonize; to transform the work of art into a symbol of something human; to make the whole work speak to every mind capable of comprehending it, all this can only be the work of a great artist with ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... two inner compartments were screened off by bulkheads made of biscuit cases, a cook's table was somehow fashioned and a reliable stove erected out of petrol tins and scrap-iron. Our engineers in this work of art were Oates and Meares. For a short while we burnt wood in the stove, but the day soon came when seal blubber was substituted, and the heat from the burning grease was sufficient to cook any kind of dish likely to be available, and also to heat ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... in a life-like manner. But the crowning glory of Monsieur Maelzel's exhibition was a panorama, scenic and mechanical, of the "Burning of Moscow." The view of the Russian capital, with its domes and minarets, was a real work of art. Then the great bell of the Kremlin began to toll, and the flames could be seen making their way from building to building. A bridge in the foreground was covered with figures, representing the flying citizens ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... beautifully stained glass, the light of which fell on a large monument, many feet square, of white marble. In the centre of this ancient and beautiful work of art, were two principal figures, with smaller ones kneeling on each side, having the hands raised in the attitude of prayer. They were intended to represent some of the ancestors of the Merton family. The date was as old as 1575. On various parts of the wall were ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... to bed he sat and talked to me. He was curiously attractive and curiously beautiful, but somehow like stone in his clear colouring and his clear-cut face. His temples, with the black hair, were distinct and fine as a work of art. ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... attendance. As he was taking leave on his final visit, the grateful mother handed to the doctor a handsome pocket-book, which she said she had worked with her own hands. The doctor bowed stiffly, and said, 'Madam, the pocket-book is quite a work of art, and I admire it exceedingly, but my fee is two ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and turned to speak to his brother concerning the work of art. Seeing Marzio's attitude, he started with a short cry and stretched out his arm as though ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... with all superstitious inscriptions, should be obliterated and destroyed. In London, St. Paul's Cross, Charing Cross, and that in Cheapside, were levelled with the ground, and throughout the country many a beautiful work of art which had existed hundreds of years shared the same fate. Place-names sometimes preserve their memory, such as Gerard's Cross, in Buckinghamshire, Crosby, Crossens, Cross Inn, Croston; these and many others record the existence ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... museums, together with maps, charts, photographs, and lists of sailings innumerable. Above the fire-place was a large water-colour painting of the barque Belinda as she appeared when on a reef to the north of Cape Palmas. An inscription beneath this work of art announced that it had been painted by the second officer and presented by him to the head of the firm. It was generally rumoured that the merchants had lost heavily over this disaster, and there were some who quoted it as an instance of Girdlestone's habitual strength of mind that ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... As a work of art the "Coupe des Pyrenees" is far and away ahead of most "cups" of the sort. It was the work of the sculptor, Ducuing, and the illustration herewith will show some of its charm. The "coupe" itself has disappeared from mortal view, it having been ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... idol, her head turreted with violet hair, the gold chain tinkling between her ankles; and is hardly more than an attitude, a fixed gesture, like the Eastern women whom one sees passing, with oblique eyes and mouths painted into smiles, their faces curiously traced into a work of art, in the languid movements of a pantomimic dance. The soul behind those eyes? the temperament under that at times almost terrifying mask? Salammbo is as inarticulate for us as the serpent, to whose drowsy beauty, capable of such sudden awakenings, hers seems half akin; they move ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the leader page of our unique daily, Mrs. Humphry Ward is that body. My objection to the phenomenon is that the Guardian falsified its item of news. It deliberately gave the impression that a serious work of art had appeared in "Diana Mallory." It ought to have known better. It did know better. If our unique daily is to yield to the snobbishness which ranks Mrs. Humphry Ward among genuine artists, where among dailies are we to look for the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... dinner, as my landlord had made each of the three courses a work of art. The repast was enlivened by an interesting conversation, to which wit and humour were not lacking. After coffee I thanked the abbot with the greatest respect, and accompanied him to his carriage, where the reverend father reiterated ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... musical, most melancholy, come from him unawares." This is still my belief; and yet, upon a fresh study of this poem, it impresses me more than at any time since my boyhood. Close acquaintance tells in favor of every true work of art. Induce the man, who neither knows art nor cares for it, to examine some poem or painting, and how soon its force takes hold of him! In fact, he will overrate the relative value of the first good work by which his attention has been fairly caught. ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe
... "Scarcely," he said. "You see, my dear, the earliest known dated sampler is one of 1643 which is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, in England. There are but six or seven known in that century at all. It would be remarkable, therefore, to find a work of art that would antedate all collections, and yet show the patterns and style of work common less ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... blasphemous defiance, he created The Jolly Beggars, which the same critic found a "splendid and puissant production." We must conclude, then, that sufficient genius can sublimate even a hideously sordid world into a superb work of art, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... 3. A true work of art cannot be added to or taken from without spoiling it. A perfect church would be spoiled by a lengthening of the chancel or raising the tower, albeit there are buildings, secular and ecclesiastical, that might be drawn out two miles long and not look any worse. The colouring of a picture ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... is opportunely dedicated to Mr. Peel; and whether as a work of art, or elegant literature, it is decidedly worthy of such distinguished notice. If the argument of the fine arts contributing to virtue hold good, then the patronage of a minister will be patriotically bestowed on such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... we go back to the book as a work of art, meaning by art not mere artifice, but that power which takes the fleeting facts of life and endues them with permanence, with deeper purports, with order and beauty. In this sense, Signor Fogazzaro is a great artist. He has the gift of the masters which ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... deference and respect. They appeared to derive an ardent pleasure from the services which they rendered to their lovely mistress. One would have thought that they attached to the dressing and embellishment of her person all the merits and the enjoyment arising from the execution of a work of art, in the accomplishing of which, fruitful of delights, they were stimulated by the passions of love, of pride, and ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... than mine to save me from my probable fate of bowling dark sayings at our old host, General Parker, from the season of clear soup to that of peaches and nuts. I dress quickly. The toilet is never to me a work of art. It is not that from my lofty moral stand-point I look down upon meretricious aids to faulty Nature. If I thought that it would set me on a fairer standing with Mrs. Zephine, I would paint my cheeks an inch ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... dropping the things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little mop,—"about the dusting, I didn't finish. It's a work of art to dust Mrs. Scherman's parlor. Don't you think there's a pleasure in handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things? Don't they get to be a part of our having, too? Don't I take as much comfort ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... that has come down to us is that of St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto, which was found in 1551, near the Basilica of St. Lawrence. Unfortunately, it was much mutilated, and has been greatly restored; but it is still of uncommon interest, not only from its excellent qualities as a work of Art, but also from the engraving upon its side of a list of the works of the Saint, and of a double paschal cycle. This, too, is now in the Christian Museum ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... wonderful work of art, a heavy golden brocade, embroidered with fans, and on each fan a Japanese poem and a little scene from the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... to urge you so to act, but that you may congratulate yourself upon having so acted, now and heretofore. For it is a glorious thing for a man to have held a government for three years in Asia, in such sort that neither statue, nor painting, nor work of art of any kind, nor any temptations of wealth or beauty (in all which temptations your province abounds) could draw you from the strictest integrity and self-control: that your official progresses should have been no cause of dread to the inhabitants, that none should be impoverished by your requisitions, ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... roaster of the seventeenth century was often a work of art. The specimen illustrated is rich in decorative motifs associated with the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... rather a series of prayers, to Christ as God, which ought to remind us of that noble truth which the 107th Psalm is meant to teach. You hear it all of you every Sunday morning. I mean the Litany. That noble composition, which seems to me more wise as a work of theology, more beautiful as a work of art, the oftener I use it—That Litany, I say, is modelled on the 107th Psalm; and it expresses the very heart and spirit of our forefathers three hundred years ago. It bids us pray to be delivered from every ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... engraved by Marc Antonio, the Virgin, standing by the dead form of her Son, has the right arm apparently bare; in the repetition of the subject it is clothed with a full sleeve, the impropriety being corrected. The first is, however, the most perfect and most precious as a work of art.—Bartsch, ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... distinction between the true artist and the dilettante. To you, Margaret, our relation is today nothing more than the recollection of a few mad nights, a few deep talks of an evening in the alleys of the English Garden; I have made of it a work of art. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Calvinism is not strong enough, may study the Pilgrimage of Hephzibah, in which nothing will be found which can be construed into an admission of free agency and universal redemption. But the most extraordinary of all the acts of Vandalism by which a fine work of art was ever defaced was committed in the year 1853. It was determined to transform the Pilgrim's Progress into a Tractarian book. The task was not easy; for it was necessary to make two sacraments the most prominent objects in the allegory, and of all Christian theologians, avowed Quakers ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... his primal inspiration. But he never did that, or even tried to do it. Perhaps, when he came to consider it more carefully, it appeared impossible; perhaps it approved itself ridiculous without experiment. His work of art, such as it was, was a growth from all his thinking and feeling about it; and without that it could no more eventuate in a climax than a tree could ripen fruit without the preliminaries of striking its roots into the ground, coming ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... less as a defense of Socialism than as a work of art. In a literary sense, Mr. Wells has ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... of modern aesthetic psychology, this seems the more natural order of events. It takes two to make a work of art: one to produce, one to appreciate. The creative appreciator is a correlative of all artistic expression. It is almost impossible for the artist to accomplish anything amid the destructive atmosphere exhaled by the ignorant, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... manner in literature [288] of the later Latin writers, which, however, he finds "laudable" for its purpose. Yet with all its learned involution, thus so oddly characterised by Quintilian, so entirely is this quality subordinated to the proper purpose of the Discobolus as a work of art, a thing to be looked at rather than to think about, that it makes one exclaim still, with the poet of athletes,—The natural is ever best!"—to de phya hapan kratiston. Perhaps that triumphant, unimpeachable naturalness ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... lord and master? Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice such as affects us all when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill or lake or work of art with which we were friends of old. In ordinary cases this indescribable impression is caused by the comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... century. Try to stand well with the Court and with those in power. No honor, no distinction, comes to seek out the talent that perishes for lack of light in a little town; tell me, if you can, the name of any great work of art executed in the provinces! On the contrary, see how Jean-Jacques, himself sublime in his poverty, felt the irresistible attraction of that sun of the intellectual world, which produces ever-new glories and stimulates the intellect—Paris, where men rub against ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... tens of thousands of men and women who write a perfectly correct and intelligent prose. And yet out of a million books, we find so very few which even aim at being works of art in the sense that Tom Jones is a work of art, and the Decline and Fall is a ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... children lessons in freehand drawing and perspective. I am simply calling attention to the fact that fine art is the only teacher except torture. I have already pointed out that nobody, except under threat of torture, can read a school book. The reason is that a school book is not a work of art. Similarly, you cannot listen to a lesson or a sermon unless the teacher or the preacher is an artist. You cannot read the Bible if you have no sense of literary art. The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... amongst his enemies, had Antony that buried him splendidly; and Caesar also took care his honors should be preserved. There stood at Milan in Gaul, within the Alps, a brazen statue, which Caesar in after-times noticed (being a real likeness, and a fine work of art), and passing by it, presently stopped short, and in the hearing of many commended the magistrates to come before him. He told them their town had broken their league, harboring an enemy. The magistrates at first simply denied the thing, and, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... abstract on free thought, it would feel itself constantly drawn into the inquiry of the moral responsibility of the freethinker in judging of the concrete cases;—science, because, even in an intellectual point of view, the analysis of a work of art is defective if it be studied apart from the personality of the mental and moral character of the artist who produces it. If even the inquiry be restricted to the analysis of intellectual causes, a biographic treatment ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... the utility of the institution of the family."[907] The leading periodical of the Fabians says: "Of all the stupid theories regarding the family, the most stupid is the belief that it is natural. On the contrary, the trinitarian family organisation is plainly a work of art, a deliberate device of man's. Nothing is more plain than the fact that the hierarchy of the family has been employed, and is still employed, as a model for the hierarchy of the State and of human society generally; in other words, as a prop of aristocracy."[908] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... made nearly thirty years ago, is a delight, almost a marvel; the style, the torrent of simile, the vivid thought, rank it as a classic. But M. Taine's is less a book of travel than a work of art; in the iridescence of the descriptions, you lose the reflection of the things described. Even hand-books, the way-clearing lictors of travel, prove, as to the Pyrenees region, first scarce and then scanty. The few we unearth in the stores are ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... work of art consists in the fact that it holds up a clear mirror to certain ideas inherent in the world in general; the beauty of a work of poetic art in particular is that it renders the ideas inherent in mankind, and thereby leads it to a knowledge of these ideas. ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... was published by Gosselin of Paris, Balzac, in a short preface, written in the publisher's name, replied to those attacks which he anticipated certain critics would make upon his hardy experiment. He claimed for his book the protection of all those to whom literature was dear, because it was a work of art—and a work of art, in the highest sense of the word, it undoubtedly is. Like Boccaccio, Rabelais, the Queen of Navarre, Ariosto, and Verville, the great author of The Human Comedy has painted an epoch. In the fresh and wonderful language of the Merry Vicar ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... before the mental eye, from all these elicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, was all the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tact and influence were involved in it as a work of art. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... companions, abides without a moment's deflexion by the principle of the stage-play. In doing this then it does more—it helps us ever so happily to see the grave distinction between substance and form in a really wrought work of art signally break down. I hold it impossible to say, before "The Awkward Age," where one of these elements ends and the other begins: I have been unable at least myself, on re-examination, to mark any such joint or seam, to see the two DISCHARGED offices as separate. They are separate before ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the landlady's heart at once. I don't know which is the finer study: the picture of his Majesty William III. crossing the Boyne, or the plump little Queen presenting a huge family Bible to an apparently uninterested black youth. In the latter work of art the eye is confused at first as the three principal features approach each other very nearly in size, and Francesca asked innocently, "Which IS the secret of England's greatness—the Bible, the Queen, or the ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... improved. I wish some one would write a volume on this subject. Indeed, I have had thoughts of doing it myself, and holding you up as the example to verify my theory. To this some thoughtless ones may object, that, where nature had done so much, nothing was left for the work of art. There cannot be a greater error. The essential difference between the silly and the wise consists in their different capacity for improvement. Bestow what pains, offer what advantages you may to a dull subject, and she will remain stationary. One of taste and talents, on the contrary, extracts improvement ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... with this quality. The crude animal energy, which makes them successful! in business, and even sometimes in war, is an energy which, for all its primitive force, is destructive of civilisation. Civilisation, the rarest work of art of our race's evolution, is essentially a thing created in restraint of such crude energies; as it is created in restraint of the still cruder ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... (SCHNURGLEICH), as if they had been upon parade. The glitter of their clear arms shone strangely in the setting sun, and the fire from them went on no otherwise than a continued peal of thunder." Grand picture indeed; but not to be enjoyed as a Work of Art, for it is coming upon us! "The spirits of our Army sank altogether", continues he; "the Foot plainly giving way, Horse refusing to come forward, all things wavering towards dissolution:"—so that Neipperg, to avoid worse, gives the word ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Banned From Window. Nab Store Keeper." We read on. The snickersnee swings towards the vitals of Hollywood. "Movie Magnate Charges Work of Art Cut; Sues Censors. Seeks Redress ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... to encourage the production of works of art, which the producing nations, so far from intending to be their "joy for ever," only hope to sell as soon as possible. Yet the motto was chosen with uncomprehended felicity: for there never was, nor can be, any essential beauty possessed by a work of art, which is not based on the conception of its honoured permanence, and local influence, as a part of appointed and precious furniture, either in the cathedral, the house, or the joyful thoroughfare, of nations which enter their gates with thanksgiving, and their courts ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... are. When some playwright, as the result of a genuine emotion, makes a drama, in the sheer delight of that emotion, and with a disregard for conventionality, and no hope of box-office approval—then you get a work of art. Incidentally, I may remark that such a work of art is so irresistible that it literally forces the box office to tinkle. It would be a ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a wonderful work. Virgil was a practical farmer; he tells you correctly what to do. But he makes a work of art of it all poetical. He suffuses his directions for stock-raising and cabbage-hoeing with the light of mythology and poetry. He gives you the Golden Age and Saturn's Italy, and makes the soil seem sacred. ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... additions from the choirs of Bury and other neighbouring towns, and from gentlemen amateurs, conversant with Handel. The Messiah was the performance of Monday night; and, on the whole, was executed in a style worthy of that great work of art, the conductor being Sir Henry Bishop, who wore his robes as a musical bachelor of the University of Oxford. On Tuesday there was a grand miscellaneous concert, the hall being even more numerously attended than on the preceding evening, there not being ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... Oglethorpe; "for when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall you remain an icy work of art forever more." ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... mad. In addition to what you know must be the case in every part of the world (the necessity of a previous provision, seed, stock, capital) that map will show you that the uses of the influences of heaven itself are in that country a work of art. The Carnatic is refreshed by few or no living brooks or running streams, and it has rain only at a season; but its product of rice exacts the use of water subject to perpetual command. This is the national bank of the Carnatic, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... room facing the door are the "Nativity" and "Transfiguration," the latter, infinitely beautiful and religious, full of quiet concentrated feeling. We were none of us critics: none of us had got beyond the stage when the sentiment of a work of art is what most affects our enjoyment of it; and we all confessed how much more impressive to us was this Transfiguration, with its three quiet spectators, than the world-famous one at the Vatican. Although there are masterpieces of Perugino's in nearly every great European collection, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... her down in the little lift, he vaguely wondered whether he had ever thought of her till now except as an animated work of art; comparable in beauty with his encaustic painting or his dearly loved Aphrodite; worth more than either of them as a possible possession, as life is worth more than stone, and endowed with a divine voice; but having neither soul, intelligence, nor will to speak of, nor any original power of ruling ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... cried, 'you can't be serious. It is a beautiful and imposing work of art—at any rate one is getting accustomed to it, and even if one doesn't happen to admire it one can always look in another direction. But imagine what life would be like if one saw that erection confronting ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... best years he left everything, even spiritual significance, behind him, and abandoned himself to the presentation of those qualities alone which in a picture are directly life-communicating, and life-enhancing. Those of us who care for nothing in the work of art but what it represents, are either powerfully attracted or repelled by his unhackneyed types and quivering feeling; but if we are such as have an imagination of touch and of movement that it is easy to ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... composed almost wholly of clay and sand. Wherever the latter had accumulated, or predominated, the gradual working of water had washed it away, and left the more compact body, in some places, so delicately hollowed out, that it seemed rather the work of art than of nature. This singular formation rested on a coarse grit, that ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... lessons taught by the flowerets. These things are impressive, but it ought to be possible to give them praise without slandering man's creations, for a God that could make a man that could make a work of art would have to be a better God than one who could merely make a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... to enable her to engage in the simple duties of life with something like zest. He talked to her about many of his studies, he searched the stores for the books which he thought would be to her taste, and took her to see every beautiful work of art on exhibition. In spite of her poverty, he daily made her life richer and fuller of all that he knew to be congenial to her nature. While she gained in serenity and in capability for quiet enjoyment, he was positively happy, for he believed that before many years ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... are other arts which combine with nature, and have a deeper truth, such as medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Also the greater part of politics they imagine to co-operate with nature, but in a less degree, having more of art, while legislation is declared by them to be wholly a work of art. 'How do you mean?' In the first place, they say that the Gods exist neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature and another by ...
— Laws • Plato
... the Indians of the northern rivers and lakes, is really a work of art. It is a model of lightness, and when we consider its frailty, and then the way in which it can be managed in the most turbulent currents, our admiration is divided between the craft of the maker and the surprising skill of the man who handles ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history, but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order and place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into association in virtue of some theory of our own? Is it not better to let the dog which has toes, come after the horse which has a single hoof, ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... go to Rome, thou wilt see in the Capitol the picture of the Cumaean Sibyl, which, often copied, no copy can even faintly represent. I beseech thee, mistake not this sibyl for another, for the Roman galleries abound in sibyls. (The sibyl referred to is the well-known one by Domenichino. As a mere work of art, that by Guercino, called the Persian sibyl, in the same collection, is perhaps superior; but in beauty, in character, there is no comparison.) The sibyl I speak of is dark, and the face has an Eastern cast; the robe and turban, gorgeous though they be, grow dim before the rich, but ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... indifference and freedom of mind, united with power and elasticity, is the disposition in which a true work of art ought to dismiss us, and there is no better test of true aesthetic excellence. If after an enjoyment of this kind we find ourselves specially impelled to a particular mode of feeling or action, and unfit for other modes, this serves as an infallible ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... painting for a little matter of twenty years, not since he was a tiny lad, flat upon his stomach in his home library, industriously tinting the robes and beards of Bible characters and the backgrounds of the Holy Land—this work of art being one of the few permitted diversions of the family Sabbath. Now he reflected that the scenes for ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... the genius has his vision, almost invariably, among the ruder peoples, it is accepted by himself and his society as something supernormal and sacred, whether its fruit be an act of leadership or an edict, a practical invention or a work of art, a story of the past or a prophecy, a cure or a devastating curse. Moreover, social tradition treasures the memory of these 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, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... MacGillivray," in several different styles of chirography, flourished and plain, and even in old text. Then I sketched out a rough design for an ornamental heading, with a wreath of flowers encircling the words "To Zozzy," and beneath this work of Art I inscribed the effort of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... suited the Honourable Mrs. Billy as they had not suited her for years. In the early spring, she and Billy had been hard at work planning costumes calculated to cause a flutter through Mayfair, and the dresses and the bonnets—each one a work of art—were waiting on their stands to do their killing work. But the Honourable Mrs. Billy, for the first time in her life, had lost interest ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... conciliate the patience even of the severest judges."[84] The phrase, "mixing human feelings," betrays in a flash Godwin's mechanical method of constructing a story. He makes no pretence that St. Leon grew naturally as a work of art. He imposed upon himself an unsuitable task, and, though he doggedly accomplished it, the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... editor is obliged to announce, "Conclusion omitted this year for want of room;" and only when a fourth year has come is he able to get rid of this continued poem. Think of the impatience of readers who had to wait from year to year for four years before they could finish reading this work of art! As the years of the war drew near, the contents of these little books took on a more martial character, and the poetical feuilleton gave place to a ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... guineas for this work of art?—fifteen, five, name your own price. The gentleman without the elephant is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with quaint little red-and-green German figures in sugar, and labeled Nurnberg in stout letters, for it had come all the way from that kuchen-famous city. The Lebkuchen I placed on my mantel shelf as befitted so magnificent a work of art. It was quite too elaborate and imposing to be sent the way of ordinary food, although it had a certain tantalizingly spicy scent that tempted one to break off ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... but more in the nobleness of our conception. Yet when you have finished all, and it appears in its full lustre; when the diamond is not only found, but the roughness smoothed; when it is cut into a form and set in gold, then we cannot but acknowledge that it is the perfect work of art and nature; and every one will be so vain to think he himself could have performed the like until he attempts it. It is just the description that Horace makes of such a finished piece; it appears ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... halls of the Snow Queen. The Northern Lights flamed so brightly that one could count them where they stood highest and lowest. In the midst of this immense empty snow hall was a frozen lake, which had burst into a thousand pieces; but each piece was like the rest, so that it was a perfect work of art; and in the middle of the lake sat the Snow Queen, when she was at home, and then she said that she sat in the Mirror of Reason, and that this was the only one, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of loops of small pink roses at the foot, heading a triple flounce of white, and on the shoulders and around the top of the bodice. You know for a portrait, madame, you want no epoch-making effect. It should be quite simple, so that in the years to come it may still please the eye as a work of art and not a creation of ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... "Ze greatest work of art in all America,"' he declared, enthusiastically; "an' France give zat to America. Ze Americans nevare think to put eet zere themselves. France do more for America zan any ozare nation, but ze Americans forget. Zey forget Lafayette. Zey forget France make it possibul for zem to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... steel." Every swing of the sledge, every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there is more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface the moment it is drawn the vapors of the atmosphere; its immaculate texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the hospital, which have ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... already traced the broad cosmopolitan lines which German literary scholarship was to follow, with German thoroughness and independence. And Heine acknowledges that "in reproductive criticism, where the beauties of a work of art were to be brought out clearly; where a delicate perception of individualities was required; and where these were to be made intelligible, the Schlegels were far superior to Lessing." The one point at which ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the end of the eighteenth century that a healthy reaction set in in England, when Repton turned back to Kent's fundamental principle and freed it from its unnatural excrescences, with the formula: the garden should be an artistic representation of the landscape, a work of art whose materials are provided by Nature herself, whether grass, flowers, bushes, trees, water, or whatever it may be that she has to offer. Thus ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... circle of the lamp's reflection. He surrounded his diary with a line of mystery which she never attempted to cross. On occasions he would read to her certain portions which struck his recollection happily; but these were invariably limited to his impressions of some city or some work of art that he was seeing for the first time in the geniality of the unadulterated joy of living in what she guessed was the period of youth before she was born; and never did they throw any light on his story except that of his views as a traveller and a personality. But he did ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... hack-writer, we have one of the most minute and careful artists that ever lived. Dr. Beattie gave his testimony to the merit of "Tom Jones." Moral or immoral, let any man examine this romance as a work of art merely, and it must strike him as the most astonishing production of human ingenuity. There is not an incident ever so trifling but advances the story, grows out of former incidents and is connected with the whole. Such a literary ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... the pursuit of some leading thought (melodic motive or phrase), with precisely the same coherence and consistency, the same evidence of determined aim, as is displayed in the creation of a forcible essay, a masterly poem, an imposing architectural plan, or any other work of art that betrays intelligence and a definite, fixed, purpose. This is no more nor less than might be expected from the dominion ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... half of one side of a room. It indicates the place of honor, and guests are always urged to sit in front of it. The floor of the "toko-no-ma" is raised four or five inches above the level of the room and should never be stepped upon. In this "toko-no-ma" is usually placed some work of art, or a vase with flowers, and on the wall is hung a picture or a few Chinese characters, written by some famous calligraphist, which are changed with the seasons. The woodwork and the coloring of this part of the room is of the choicest. The ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... near the object of my search. Turning to the right near the brow of the hill, I proceeded along a path which brought me to a causeway leading over a deep ravine, and connecting the hill with another which had once formed part of it, for the ravine was evidently the work of art. I passed over the causeway, and found myself in a kind of gateway which admitted me into a square space of many acres, surrounded on all sides by mounds or ramparts of earth. Though I had never been in such a place before, I knew that I stood within ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... characteristic was the cantabile—the singing quality; and this he had beyond all players. The flowing sweetness of his style is indescribable. There were many, indeed, who complained of a want of fire, and denied him that passion without which no work of art is perfect. But it was impossible to hear him play his fantasia from "Don Giovanni," for instance, without perceiving all the passion of the original. Mozart was not lost under his hands. And the impression of coldness was largely due, doubtless, to the tranquillity ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... advance with the times, people begin to go to the theatre to see plays, and not merely an actor in a part. The "well-made play," which was a piece of mechanical contrivance into which the puppets were ingeniously fitted, may some day develop into a work of art—a thing born rather than made—growing up like a flower in the imagination ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... cottage had been built many years when the Whittiers came here. The clear pine boards in the dado are two feet in width. In this room are placed many memorials of the poet of interest to visitors. What to him was the most precious thing in the house is the portrait of his mother over the mantel—a work of art that holds the attention of the most casual visitor. The likeness to her distinguished son is remarked by all. One sees strength of character in the beautiful face, and a dignity that is softened by sweetness and serenity of spirit. The plain lace cap, white kerchief, ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... tapestry factory was an incalculable burden. A man could not set up a loom, a single one, as an artist sets up an easel, and in solitude produce his woven work of art. Other matters go to the making of a tapestry than weaving, matters which have to do with cartoons for the design, dyes, wools, threads, etc.; so that many hands must be employed, and these must all be paid. The apprentice system helped much, but even so, the master ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... applied to his Rembrandts which he examined from time to time, half secretly; and if it be true that the loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite, almost ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... some others? No, I will only say to the judges that if, on account of his description of the carriage in The Double Misunderstanding, M. Merimee had been prosecuted, he would have been acquitted immediately. One sees in his book only a work of art of great literary beauty. One would no more condemn it than he would condemn paintings or statuary, which is not content with representing all the beauties of the body, but wishes to add ardour and passion. I will follow it no farther; I ask you to recognise ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... with the Bishop's wife, Mr. Melnotte dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, "Vanity Fair" would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the chief ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of "Esmond" is a yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas; the great and wily English ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reminiscences—a sort of pleasure by ricochet, which comforts many in distress, and turns some others into sentimental libertines: and the whole book, if you will but look at it in that way, is seen to be a work of art to Pepys's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expedition into the interior of Australia. He had been employed in various sanitary arrangements there and in India, and had finally worked his way slowly home, overland, visiting Egypt and Palestine, and refreshing his memory with every Italian, German, or French Cathedral, or work of art, that had delighted ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... vanishes in the rays of the sun. Is what is not too common for the painter, too common for the poet? Is an idyl in the truest, warmest, softest colors of the soul, like the "Beautiful Miller's Daughter," less a work of art than a landscape by Ruysdael? And observe in these songs how the execution suits the subject; their tone is thoroughly popular, and reminds many of us, perhaps too much, of the popular songs collected by Arnim and Brentano in "Des Knaben Wunderhorn." ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... before my eye a tower!—a tower, slender and high, with curved dome, the work of Art! A cry burst from my lips,—I fainted with joy. Afraid to touch the instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and Appreciation, that the lamb had assimilated the lion. For the heir of all literary studies, according to Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to consider the work of art in its historical setting and its psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work of art under all these aspects, his aim is, primarily, not to explain, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... with Macchiavelli. They examined not the moral but the political man, not his motives but his acts. The terrible was not terrible when it was the deed of a strong will, nor was crime disgraceful when it excited astonishment as a work of art. The terrible way in which Ferdinand of Naples handled the conspiracy of the nobles of his kingdom made him, in the eyes of Italy, not horrible but great; and Macchiavelli speaks of the trick with which ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... mentioned above, ends in a sandy beach; beyond which the land is broken down into small chasms or gullies, and has a broad border of trees resembling tall willows; which, from its regularity, might be supposed a work of art, did not its extent forbid us to think so. Farther up on the ascent, the trees were of the deep green mentioned before. Some of us supposed these to be the rima, intermixed with low cocoa palms; and a few of some other sorts. They ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... that the first Part is only the merest fragment, and although the subject of Faust is endless and can never be fully treated in any one work of art (the whole poem 'necessarily remaining a fragment,' as Goethe himself said), nevertheless the second Part does solve in one of many possible ways the problem left unsolved by the first half of the poem, namely the final attainment of peace and happiness by the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill |
