"Gild the lily" Quotes from Famous Books
... exaggeration which leads to degeneracy. This ebb and flow is most interesting: the feeling the way at the beginning, ever growing surer and surer until the high level of perfection is reached; and then the desire to "gild the lily" leading to over-ornamentation, and so to decline. However, the germ of good taste and the sense of truth and beauty is never dead, and asserts itself slowly in a transition period, and then once more one of the great periods of decoration ... — Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop |