"Work of art" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the darkness, he found himself in a spacious, rocky room. It was one of those natural caves which seem as if the work of art, rather than a freak of nature. The room was almost a perfect square, and extending around its sides was a seat of solid rock, while in a square hole, which looked as if it had been excavated ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... and almost at the gates of Pekin, the great town of Tung-tcheou and the famous bridge of Palikao, where, on the 21st of September, 1860, the Anglo-French army defeated 25,000 Tartar horsemen. This bridge, a curious work of art, measures one hundred and fifty yards in length and thirty in breadth; the marble balustrades are skilfully carved, and surmounted by marble lions ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... boy, every experience of this sort fired my imagination with ambition, and led to all sorts of noble resolutions, some of which, at any rate, were carried into execution. The deepest impression ever made on me by any work of art was at Munich, ten years ago, when I heard for the first time Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde," which I was already familiar with through the pianoforte score. The performance began at six o'clock, and I had had nothing to eat since noon. It lasted till eleven o'clock, and one ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... labor of the commission is finished. On their behalf I present this work of art to the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... heard it from her lips, and her tears and her beauty replaced the language of Wagner and of Homer; and so well did they do this that I am not sure that the emotion I experienced in listening to her was less than that which I have experienced before a work of art. ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... Bowser, while the rest murmured in the effort to admire the work of art. "And is that ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... to laugh at professed critics, and say that their opinions were formed by fashion. Thus in painting, he would say how in his day every one admired masters who are now neglected. His love of pictures as a young man is almost a proof that he must have had an appreciation of a portrait as a work of art, not as a likeness. Yet he often talked laughingly of the small worth of portraits, and said that a photograph was worth any number of pictures, as if he were blind to the artistic quality in a painted portrait. But this was generally ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... they all moved heavily away. Bos locutus est. 'Bacchus was the wine-god!' This, apparently, is what a picture tells to one man. To another it presents divine harmonies, perceptible indeed in nature, but here by the painter-poet for the first time brought together and cadenced in a work of art. For another it is perhaps the hieroglyph of pent-up passions and desired impossibilities. For yet another it may only mean the unapproachable inimitable triumph ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... especially, whose every movement was restrained by this long-pending affair, were exceedingly impatient, and tempted at times to take the matter into their own hands, and spoil the perfectness of this well constructed work of art, conducted according to all the rules, the beautiful trial which was dear to the Bishop's heart—and destined to be, though perhaps in a sense somewhat different to that which he hoped, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... its own among these works Of the old masters, noble as they are. I will go in and study it more closely. I always prophesied that Benvenuto, With all his follies and fantastic ways, Would show his genius in some work of art That would amaze the world, and be a challenge Unto all ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... well-worn case, and Dick proudly displayed the likeness of a stout, much bejewelled young woman with two staring infants on her knee. In his sight, the poor picture was a more perfect work of art than any of Sir Joshua's baby-beauties, or Raphael's Madonnas, and the little story needed no better sequel than the young father's praises of his twins, the covert kiss he gave their mother when he turned as if ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... Rousseau in his Confessions, and 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 ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... or she will say: Here am I, a creature of great gifts and exquisite sensibilities, drawn by great dreams, and vibrating to great emotions; yet this potent and exquisite self is as yet, I know, but unwrought material of the perfect work of art it is intended that I should make of it—but the marble wherefrom, with patient chisel, I must liberate the perfect and triumphant ME! As a poet listening with trembling ear to the voice of his inspiration, so I tremulously ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... chimneys. Such a cottage, to be pleasing and satisfactory, must have irregularities in form, variety in ornament, and boldness in treatment. A square house with additions of gables, and dormers and pinnacles, and ridge crests, will not give us an English cottage. It is a work of art, like a poem or a picture, and not a mechanical aggregation of Gothic features and ornaments. We were about to say that it should never be attempted in any other material than stone, but as many of us cannot command ...
— Woodward's Country Homes • George E. Woodward
... character, or with those principles of action, motives, and feelings, upon which men would move under given circumstances, or with the modes of action which in common prudence they would be likely to adopt. The truth is, that, as a coherent work of art, the Robbers is indefensible; but, however monstrous it may be pronounced, it possesses a power to agitate and convulse, which will always obliterate its great faults to the young, and to all whose judgment is not too much developed. And the best ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... tone and strength 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, ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... infatuated with him. I suppose he is the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and the cheerfulest, and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived at what he is by any careless process, or any sudden one; he is a work of art, and "art is long"; he is the product of immemorial ages, and of deep calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been reincarnated more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... interest of it is that it belongs to a different age of the human mind, in which there is so much like and also unlike ourselves. Many of our commonplaces and common words are being thought out for the first time by Plato. Add to this that in the original this book is the most perfect work of art in the world. I wonder whether it will have any ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... large white tea-kettle, and next morning a drunken, idle fellow, with a clay pipe in his mouth, and a dirty pair of corduroy trousers, no coat, but a shirt very open at the chest, showing inflamed skin, the effect of drink, inspected that work of art with blinking eyes and vacillating toes, and said, "This comes of a chap doing too much. A few more like you, and work would be scarce. A fine thing for gentlefolks to make one man fill two places! but it ain't the gentlefolks' fault, it's the ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... implements, and it may have been the highest type of metallic value among them. A round copper coin with a serpent stamped on it was found at Palenque, and T-shaped copper coins are very abundant in the ruins of Central America. This too we can understand, for copper was necessary in every work of art or utility. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... the fact alone that a man is a mere thing of shreds and patches until his heart is united, as the Psalmist says, to fear the name of God—to leave these considerations aside, I say, no man's life is fit for representation as a work of art save in proportion as there has been a significant relation between his outer and inner life, a visible outcome of some sort of harmony between them. Therefore I chose the portion in which I had suffered most, and in which the outward occurrences of my own life had been most interesting, for ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... years he was about to live shrouded in gloom—a gloom in whose twilight could be dimly discerned the shattered wreck of his life. After a long period, from the debris of said wreck, he would build the structure of a great literary work of art, which all mankind would look upon with awe, but which he, standing apart, would eye with indifference, all joy being stricken dead by his memories of the past. But that was in the future. Just now he was in the gloom business. So, being a wealthy youth, he decided to go far, far away. This was ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... somewhat incoherent legs. A train of touch-paper connected with a Roman candle was cunningly devised to protrude in the form of a tongue from his mouth, while ginger-beer bottles filled with gunpowder served as hands. And the whole work of art was one dark evening conveyed by me tenderly and deposited among a wilderness of broken forms, empty hampers, and old bottles in the lumber room under the school gymnasium, "to be called for" in a few ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... for commonplace colours or conventional shapes in a work of art, but I do like things to be recognisable; to know, for instance, when a thing is meant to be a man and when it is meant to be a boat, and when it is meant to be a pookin and when it is meant to be a sun. The art of Priscilla seems to me to satisfy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... better on to best, Arts move; the homely, like the plastic kind; And high ideals fired that infant mind. Once more she backed, once more a space apart Considered and reviewed her work of art: Doubtful at first, and gravely yet awhile; Till all her features blossomed in a smile. And the child, waking at the call of bliss, To each she ran, and ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... indescribable charm and potency. At the end of the 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, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... earnest faith, their stern fanaticism, their revolting superstition, just as when we look upon a picture we know that those brilliant hues and tones, that spirit which informs the whole, could never be, were it not for the vulgar earths and oil out of which the glorious work of art is mixed and made. Strangely monotonous are all the witch trials of which Europe has so many to show. At first the accused denies, then under torture she confesses, then relapses and denies; tortured again she confesses again, amplifies her story, and accuses others. When given to the stake, ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... knowledge of the circumstances under which a work of art is composed occasionally gives a clearer insight into certain of its peculiarities, so perhaps an analysis of the individual elements which go to make up the present Assembly of Versailles may give the reader a clue to the reason of some of its legislative measures, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... of the Darwinian hypothesis to literature, which owes its existence almost entirely to the great French critic before mentioned, but which has since rejected as unscientific many of the laws he formulated, may be called historical or sociological criticism. It judges a work of art, an artist, or an artistic period, on its dynamic and not its intrinsic merits. Its standard is influence, not power or beauty. It is concerned with the artistic qualities of a given artist only in so far as he exerts influence over his successors ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... beautiful portrait there," said the Princess sincerely. "Every year for his birthday I give my husband some work of art. If you do not find me too unworthy a subject it shall be ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... bold spirit of the Chansons de Geste and the literal realism of the Fabliaux. This is the 'chante-fable' (or mingled narrative in verse and prose) of Aucassin et Nicolete. Here all is delicacy and exquisiteness—the beauty, at once fragile and imperishable, of an enchanting work of art. The unknown author has created, in his light, clear verse and his still more graceful and poetical prose, a delicious atmosphere of delicate romance. It is 'the tender eye-dawn of aurorean love' that he shows us—the happy, sweet, almost childish passion ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... manner or the words, 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 ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... This admirable work of art is not known as well as it deserves either in England or America. It is a work of genius in every sense of that word, and it produces on the mind that curious sense of completeness and finality ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... a valuable 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 ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... most accurate chirographist that 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 there are variations ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... of inspiring ideas, and engaging forms of original artistic expression. As Mr. Balfour says, "M. Bergson's 'Evolution Creatrice' is not merely a philosophical treatise, it has all the charm and all the audacities of a work of art, and as such defies ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... quickly about, a hum of excited voices, and then he felt a great swell of confidence. The roaring in his ears was gone, his nerves became amazingly steady, and every stroke with his paddle was long and finished, a work of art. ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sketch—then at the view which it represented—then back again at the sketch. The corners of his mouth turned upward with a humorous expression of scorn. "Madam Nature," he said, "I beg your pardon." With those words, he composedly tore his work of art into small pieces, and scattered them out ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... Cascade La Portaille and the Doric Arch. The Cascade consists of a considerable stream 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 ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... a picture and call it inaccurate, untrustworthy, unbeautiful. That last, the most vital issue of all, is the one least assured. Loud fools always do do that sort of thing. Take quite ignorant people before almost any beautiful work of art and they will laugh at it as absurd. If one sits on a popular evening in that long room at South Kensington which contains Raphael's cartoons, one remarks that perhaps a third of those who stray through and look at all those fine efforts, ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... ask the trees 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, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... from the external 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 ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... tale as one form of the story is one part of the largest means to unify the entire work or play of the child. In proportion as the work of art, nature-study, game, occupation, etc., is fine, it will deal with some part of the child's everyday life. The good tale parallels life. It is a record of a portion of the race reaction to its environment; ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... what I say. Now if, in order to make this statue, which is composed of metal or stone, more natural, I stuck on it a wig of real hair, would not you feel at once that I had spoilt the work; that as you clearly express it, 'it would not be the right thing'? and instead of making the work of art more natural, I should have made it laughably unnatural, by forcing insensibly upon the mind of him who looked at it the contrast between the real life, represented by a wig of actual hair, and the artistic life, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had kept it in his box for nearly half of the period during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work of art ought to lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, by the way, be questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried his novel for this time, in order that the work might improve, but because he did not know where else ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but Isobel's artistic fancy had made it a perfect work of art. It was the figure of a youth clad in armour holding high in his right hand a white cross with "Onward" worked in ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... relationship to their fellows. Finally, the story and the study must be fused by the imagination, which selects or creates various scenes, characters, incidents, and which orders or arranges its materials so as to make a harmonious work that appeals to our sense of truth and beauty; in other words, a work of art. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... American for the aid sent to their country from our own during the famine period of the past two years. It is beautifully engrossed and its illumination embraces water-color drawings which render it a most attractive work of art. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... of the Vale of Llangollen, and "destroy the happiness of his existence for the remainder of his days." Sir John Hanmer, Bart., M.P., on the other hand, was inclined to become rhapsodic. He looked upon a railway "as a fine work of art," which any painter might be glad to include in his landscape—only, of course, it must not cut off a landed proprietor from his woods and his other wild grounds, as the Great Western scheme proposed to do, and against this he not only objected ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... he was never so disgusted and appalled in his life. His self-command is the most admirable worldly thing I have ever seen. What made it beautiful was that one could feel in it a tragic suggestion as in a great work of art." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... rug of great beauty was taken to England from India by Lord Clive, who ordered the architect of his magnificent palace—Claremont—then in process of building, to design a room especially for it. Such special care for the proper display of this work of art may be exceptional, but it shows true appreciative power on the ...
— Rugs: Oriental and Occidental, Antique & Modern - A Handbook for Ready Reference • Rosa Belle Holt
... that "oldest tale which is for ever new." Novels will be read: but that is all the more reason why women should be trained, by the perusal of a higher, broader, deeper literature, to distinguish the good novel from the bad, the moral from the immoral, the noble from the base, the true work of art from the sham which hides its shallowness and vulgarity under a tangled plot and melodramatic situations. She should learn—and that she can only learn by cultivation—to discern with joy, and drink in with reverence, the good, the beautiful, and the true; and to turn with ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... scout the idea of attempting anything that may be considered a work of art in the ridiculously limited space of a postage stamp. The restriction of a postage stamp when viewed alongside a canvas measuring several yards in length and height is probably hopeless enough. Nevertheless, many a stamp collector who is not devoid of art can find stamps which seem to him to be ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... musing intelligence that has foreseen, loved, created, elaborated, perfected, until, in the middle ground which we call life, somewhere between nothing and nothing, hangs the perfect thing which we love and cannot understand, but which we are compelled to confess a work of art. It is at once something and nothing, a dream of happy memory, a song, a benediction. In viewing it one finds nothing to criticise or to regret. The thing sings, it has colour. It has rapture. You wonder at the loving, patient care ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... 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 a Madonna, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... brilliant white stucco. Upon the former were hung several trophies of weapons and antlers of deer. In the centre, at the right, in a kind of ornamental shrine, was an ivory and ebony crucifix, which was itself a priceless work of art. The long dining-table had no cloth to conceal the fact that it was of the richest mahogany, dark with age and polished like a mirror. On the table was an abundance of fine china ware, none of it of modern manufacture, ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... not yet justified when it has been shown to be an accurate, and therefore interesting, representation; it has to be shown also that it is a representation from which men can derive enjoyment. In presence of the most tragic circumstances, represented in a work of Art, the feeling of enjoyment, as is well known, may still subsist: the representation of the most utter calamity, of the liveliest anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it: the more tragic the situation, the deeper becomes the enjoyment; and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... piano school. As a player his 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 ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... mirror—distorted though it may somewhat be-to the interior of life, reflecting every object, the great and the mean the beautiful and the deformed, with their natural prominence and their vivacity of coloring, to the eye of the spectator. As a work of art, such a production may be thought to be below criticism. But, although it defy the rules of art in its composition, it does not necessarily violate the principles of taste; for it conforms in its spirit to the spirit of the age in which it was written. And ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... 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 ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... 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
... the house, which rises to excellence of workmanship in relief only in the meeting of the two kings, lends itself irresistibly to the same conclusion. And for this reason I have not that extravagant admiration of it, viewed purely as work of art, which may be better reserved for conceptions that are more original in the mind of the sculptor, and of more local interest in the town for which the work was done. As an example of the passion for processions and decoration, however, few better ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... the few persons who looked upon life as an art, and every person not merely as an artist, but as a work of art. She looked upon herself as a living statue, which should always stand on a polished pedestal, with right accessories, and under the most fitting lights. She would have been glad to have everybody so live and act. She was annoyed when ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... published as a serial in "All the Year Round," in 1861, is one of Dickens's finest works. It is rounded off so completely and the characters are so admirably drawn that, as a finished work of art, it is hard to say where the genius of its author has surpassed it. If there is less of the exuberance of "Pickwick," there is also less of the characteristic exaggeration of Dickens; and the pathos of the ex-convict's return is far deeper than the pathos of children's ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... especially desire to render his creation a work of art, it is also requisite to strive for fidelity. As the heroine's portrait must reveal her true character, so the life represented here must correspond in every line with the civilization of the period described. For this purpose we placed Cleopatra in the centre of a larger group of people, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the most beautiful and the best matched suit in the whole court. It is a work of art to have discovered a sober suit of clothes not black; and I bet that the most skilful tailors would not do as much ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... entitled Le Caravansera de Cairo, the scenery of 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 ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... representing Cupid is installed; a Parisian Cupid, so blistered and disfigured that he looks like a candidate for one of the adjacent hospitals, and might suggest an allegory to lovers of symbolism. The half-obliterated inscription on the pedestal beneath determines the date of this work of art, for it bears witness to the widespread enthusiasm felt for Voltaire on his return to ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... work of art carries within it its own rule and method, which must be found out before it can be achieved." "Chaque oeuvre a faire a sa poetique en soi, qu'il faut trouver," said Flaubert. Truth in a work of art is sincerity. That a man says what he ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... Caesar was unwilling to receive her. There came into his presence, as he sat in the palace, a group of slaves bearing a long roll of matting, bound carefully and seeming to contain some precious work of art. The slaves made signs that they were bearing a gift to Caesar. The master of Egypt bade them unwrap the gift that he might see it. They did so, and out of the wrapping came Cleopatra—a radiant vision, appealing, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... eyes filled her with a horror which she could not express. The print was one which drew largely on its imagination for its engravings, and it already contained an illustration of the death of Sir Blount Constantine. In this work of art he was represented as standing with his pistol to his mouth, his brains being in process of flying up to the roof of his chamber, and his native princess rushing terror-stricken away to a remote position in the thicket of palms which ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... August William Schlegel was too tenderly weak and the eyes of his brother Friedrich too mystically clouded for the former to strike so strongly and the latter so keenly and accurately as Lessing. True, in descriptive criticism, where the beauties of a work of art are to be set forth—where it came to a delicate detection of its characteristics and bringing them home to our intelligence—then, compared to the Schlegels, old Lessing was nowhere. But what shall I say as to their recipes for preparing works of art? There we find in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... thousands who came to admire the production of their skill. Moreover, Huss, who perfectly understood the object of their attempt, and entirely coincided with it, made frequent reference to their work of art in his discourses. In a word, the seed was sown; and but a little while elapsed ere the plant sprang ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... you have Rossetti's delightfully anemic Madonna, and Holman Hunt's 'Light of the World.' A day or two ago I was talking to a lady who pronounced that—" he extended his finger toward the Hunt—"the greatest work of art produced in the last hundred years. Her reason? Its comforting quality. I am sure ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... description. But the great point of Gulliver is that, like Defoe's work, though in not quite the same way, it is interesting—that it takes hold of its reader and gives him its "peculiar pleasure." When a work of art does this, ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... deals with the same theme in his Ode to Pyrrha, famous in Milton's overrated translation, and the difference between the young man writing under the smart of wounded feeling and the poet, calmly though intensely elaborating his subject as a work of art, becomes ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... mile and a half in circumference, rises out of the ocean to the height of about one hundred and forty-four feet. Before landing we sailed along the eastern shore, examining the wonderful caves and the fine colonnades which form its sides. One might suppose that it was rather a work of art than thrown up by Nature. The yachts were hove-to, and we pulled off to examine the caves in the boats. One is known as the Clam Shell Cave, another as the Herdsman's Cave, and a third is denominated the Great Colonnade ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... been presented in all past generations. It may be an unhealthy sentiment, it may be absurd, but my experience is that it exists and must be taken into account. A picture, a statue, a piece of china, any work of art, is eternally the same, however charming. The most one can do is to set it in different positions, different lights. Theophile Gautier declared in a moment of frank impatience that if the Transfiguration hung in his study, he would assuredly find blemishes therein after ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... not overrated his powers. The dinner, when one considers the materials of which it was composed, was really excellent. The soup was truly a great work of art; the fried oysters dreamily delicious; and as to the coffee, Ned must have got the receipt for making it from the very angel who gave the beverage to Mahomet to restore that ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... this time, when the master of Last's Holding had lain a month beneath the staring mound under the pine tree out to the east where they had buried Harkness, that Jose finished a work of art. For many days he had laboured secretly in a calf-shed out behind the small corrals, and in his slim dark fingers there was beauty unleashed. Finest carving he knew, since his forbears, peons across the Border, had spent their lives upon the beams of the Missions. ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... deliberated. Last night they decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ. They consider it the most faultless work of art the world has ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... force, and is a hindrance to correct appreciation. The rejection of details, where permissible, and understandingly done, facilitates comprehension, which is baffled by a multiplication of minutiae, just as the impression of a work of art, or of a story, is lost amid a multiplicity of figures or of actors. The investigation precedent to formulation of ideas must be close and minute, but that done, the unbiassed selection of the most important, expressed graphically by a few lines and a few dots, leads most ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... the achievement that is commemorated the richer must be the outward symbol, implies that a memorial to Shakespeare must be a work of art of the loftiest merit conceivable. Unless those who promote the movement concentrate their energies on an object of beauty, unless they free the movement of all suspicion that the satisfaction of the commemorative instinct is to be a secondary and not the primary aim, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... capture of Pegu by the Burmans in 1757 and was rediscovered by the engineers surveying the route for the railway. It lies almost in sight of the line and is surprising by its mere size, as one comes upon it suddenly in the jungle. As a work of art it can hardly be praised. It does not suggest the Buddha on his death bed, as is intended, but rather some huge spirit of the jungle waking up and watching the railway with ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... Byron, young love, some who never smiled again, the sapphire night, crisp, clear, cold, thick-strewn with stars, all sparkling with frosty brightness—impressions I would not exchange for art understood, or anything I am capable of feeling now before the greatest work of art in the ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... readily admitted, perhaps, in the case of the arts of expression than in the case of arts of decoration and let us define these terms. If you will allow me, I will quote from an address delivered a year ago before the New York Architectural League. Any work of art whose object is to explain and express the thing represented, or to convey the artist's thought about the thing represented, is art of representation, or, if you please, art of expression, or if you please, expressional art. I offer these ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... built for the purpose, or the play given in the open fields. Pope quotes this anecdote to show how some critics in spite of their professed acceptance of general rules are so prejudiced in favor of a minor point as to judge a whole work of art from one ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... symbolic; a thought, an idea, must always constitute the significance, the soul of its outward form. The mere delusive imitations, the servile copyings of the actual shapes of reality, are not the proper objects of art. To form a master work of art, the idea symbolized must be pure and noble; the technical execution, faultless. No heavier censure can, however, be passed upon an artist, than that he possesses only the technic or rhetoric of art, without having penetrated ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... belief of the true vitosophist, expressing rationally his belief in and relation to the subjects of God, Life Eternal, Death, Immortality, Evil and Good, the forces of Nature, the practice of the Virtues and the attainment of Happiness. This is a work of Art and is worthy of a place of honor in the library, study or school room. Mailed flat, to any address, securely packed, postpaid. Price ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... 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 ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... as the hole rapidly deepened he spooned it out and poured in a little more water. It was the same uninteresting work that he had seen men do when they were digging a railroad cut; and the object was the same, to shoot down the dirt with the minimum of labor and powder. But with Denver it became a work of art, a test of his muscle and skill, and at each downward thrust he bent from the hips and struck with a ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... dramatist. The falling of the rug in Molly Seagrim's bedroom[175] is one of the happiest incidents ever devised, and no doubt suggested to Sheridan the falling of the screen in the "School for Scandal." But the chief distinction of Fielding lies in his having carried the novel to a high point as a work of art. It was the opinion of Coleridge that the "Oedipus Tyrannus," "The Alchemist," and "Tom Jones," were the three most perfect plots ever planned.[176] It is to this excellence of plot—the subordination ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... judges it more severely than mere gallantry or looseness of manners. In one sense the world is right. A woman in love betrays her nature and fails in her function, which is to be admired by all men, like a work of art. A woman is a work of art, the most marvellous that man's industry ever has produced. A woman is a wonderful artifice, due to the concourse of all the arts mechanical and of all the arts liberal. She is the work of everybody, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... being equal to the demands which were made upon it, it gave way in 1865 to the present graceful and larger iron-spanned structure, which, while in no way a grand work of art, does not ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... produced a sort of rude comedy. It becomes an inviting treat to the populace, and gains an additional zest and burlesque by following the already established plan of tragedy; and the first man of genius who seizes the idea, and reduces it into form,—into a work of art,—by metre and music, is the Aristophanes ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... increase of knowledge, the loss of belief in doctrines that were fundamental in Dante's creed, the changes in the order of society, the new thoughts of the world, have not lessened the moral import of the poem, any more than they have lessened its excellence as a work of art. Its real substance is as independent as its artistic beauty, of science, of creed, and of institutions. Human nature has not changed; the motives of action are the same, though their relative force and the desires ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... soft to them, and supply themselves with water-jar and lamp. Their drink is the clear fresh spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish. Everything prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art; but an architect might learn symmetry from it. Care is taken of the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... cauldron of daffodil chaos," and the like. {2} You may use common words in an unwonted sense, keeping some private interpretation clearly before you. Thus you may speak, if you like to write partly in the tongue of Hellas, about "assimilating the ethos" of a work of art, and so write that people shall think of the processes of digestion. You may speak of "exhausting the beauty" of a landscape, and, somehow, convey the notion of sucking an orange dry. Or you may wildly mix your metaphors, as when a critic accuses Mr. Browning ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... the 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 the best in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... personification of what he sees; he is so far carried away by the beauty and truth of the representation that the passions represented affect him as if they were those of real persons. This relative perfection of a work of art, either in the way the objects stand out, in the varied diffusion of light and shade, in the movement and expression of figures, in the effect of the whole in its details and background, is all heightened and confirmed by the underlying entification of images. The process we have before described ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... uppers of the shoe are now stitched up, and after a careful inspection, they are sent on to the "lasting-room." The "last" of the earlier times was roughly whittled out, and it was the same for both feet; but the last of to-day is almost a work of art, so carefully is it made and polished. The shoe manufacturers jokingly declare that lasts must be changed three times a day in order to keep up with the fashions. Feet do not change in form, save when they have been distorted by badly shaped shoes; but in ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... Lincoln's Inn Fields was too far off for a servant of the Council who might have to attend meetings at seven in the morning. He accordingly migrated to Charing Cross, now become again Charing without the cross, this work of art having been an early (1647) victim of religious barbarism. In November he was accommodated with chambers in Whitehall. But from these he was soon ousted by claimants more considerable or more importunate, and in 1651 he removed to "a pretty garden-house" ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... 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 in ancient times of a cross, and probably ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to let two or three men make the final dash, and therefore it was made as small and light as possible. Fortunately we had no need to use it, as every man reached the goal; and we then found that the best way of disposing of Ronne's work of art was to let it stay there as ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... work of art in miniature. The crescendo passages were sung relatively with that introductory golden whisper as a standard. For the moment Sylvia forgot that the singer's shoulders were beautifully compact and vigorous. She was visualizing ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... 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 than a ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... teeth in his room,' said the manager. 'Doesn't that prove he was flustered and hurried?' I allowed that it looked like it. But I said, 'Look here: if he was so very much pressed, why did he part his hair so carefully? That parting is a work of art. Why did he put on so much?—for he had on a complete out-fit of underclothing, studs in his shirt, sock-suspenders, a watch and chain, money and keys and things in his pockets.' That's what I said to the manager. He couldn't find an ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... then, also, how many desillusions had she not experienced in a few hours? How had her heart been cooled by the rich flow of words in Corilla's poesy! Her whole soul had languished for the acquaintance of a poetess, and she had heard only a rhymed work of art. And then the last terrible event! Why had they wished to murder her? Who were her unknown enemies, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... them," said Canalis, smiling upon her, "we are neither beaten, nor caught in a contradiction. Every work of art, let it be in literature, music, painting, sculpture, or architecture, implies a positive social utility, equal to that of all other commercial products. Art is pre-eminently commerce; presupposes it, in short. ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... appearance that every one considered her beauty as something which transcended her private ownership, and which belonged by right to the polite world at large, to any one who could appreciate it properly, just as though it were a sunset or a great work of art or of nature. And so, when she gave away her photographs no one thought it meant anything more serious than a recognition on her part of the fact that it would have been unkind and selfish in her not to have shared the enjoyment of so ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... reason, that she ultimately became his wife. There were some little circumstances in his history which must have laid hold of my imagination; for I used over and over to demand its repetition; and one of my first attempts at a work of art was to scrabble his initials with my fingers, in red paint, on the house-door. One day, when playing all alone at the stair-foot—for the inmates of the house had gone out—something extraordinary had caught my eye on the landing-place above; and looking up, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... would lend pathos and interest to 'Zeph' even if they did not exist in the story itself. The creation of 'Zeph' is a fitting close to a life of splendid literary activity, and it will be enjoyed by those who believe in the novel as, first of all, a work of art, which can be made in proper hands a tremendous force for truth and justice, and real instead of formal righteousness."—New York ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... work of art seems entirely wanton and unnecessary. It produced no result whatever of advantage. There were neither English, French, nor Belgian soldiers in Ypres at the time. The populace consisted of about ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... It is the highest form of energy, because it is free and creative; a joy in itself, and therefore a joy in the world. This is the explanation of the sense of freedom and elation which come from a great work of art; it is the instinctive perception of the fact that while immense toil lies behind the artist's skill, the soul of the creation came from beyond the world of work and the making of it was a bit of play. The man of creative ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... me in upon you," he said, "or I should not have ventured to disturb you in this way. A work of art, is it, Miss ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sua of Newman, and the Literature and Dogma of Matthew Arnold. To discuss these three conceptions of religion adequately in verse would have been impossible even for the argumentative genius of Dryden, and would have converted a work of art into a theological treatise. But three representative scenes might be painted, and some truths of passionate feeling might be flung out by way of commentary. Such was the design of the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... proper to such things to act, rather than to be acted on, because they have not dominion over their actions. Wherefore the craftsman needs art, not that he may live well, but that he may produce a good work of art, and have it in good keeping: whereas prudence is necessary to man, that he may lead a good life, and not merely that he ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... the head of our American Engravers on Steel, in a letter addressed to us, says "that it would cost $4,000 to engrave the plate now," which is a sufficient guarantee of the very high character of the Engraving as a work of art. Price of the Engraving, $10 for single copy. To enable all to possess this beautiful work of art, at, a very reduced rate, the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN will be sent one year, together with a copy of the picture, ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Bailley Carthew, Member of Parliament for Stallbridge, standing by a table and brandishing a document; Singleton Carthew, Esquire, represented in the foreground of a herd of cattle—doubtless at the desire of his tenantry, who had made him a compliment of this work of art; and the Venerable Archdeacon Carthew, D.D., LL.D., A.M., laying his hand on the head of a little child in a manner highly frigid and ridiculous. So far as my memory serves me, there were no other pictures in this exclusive hostelry; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... climate of its own, and the character of the place seems to impose itself on the incidents that occur, dictating subordination or contrast. The events that happen within the limits of one of these magic isles could in every case be cut off from the rest of the story and framed as a separate work of art. The long starvation of David Balfour on the island of Earraid, the sharks of crime and monsters of blasphemy that break the peace of the shining tropical lagoons in Treasure Island and The Ebb Tide, the captivity on the Bass Rock in Catriona, the supernatural terrors that ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... conception of the poem is yet so closely and harmoniously worked out, that all the parts are perfectly balanced, and from first to last scarcely a single line is superfluous or misplaced. The finish and beauty of the poem as a work of art, are not more conspicuous than the knowledge of human nature displayed in the portraits of the principal characters. The result is, that the poem is more modern, in form and in spirit, than almost any other work of its author; the chaste style and sedulous polish of the stanzas admit ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... drunk of the poisoned beaker, nor Christ, our Lord, been crucified. Mediocrity is popular, because it has the sympathy of the masses. Not only does it come within their comprehension, but it is accommodating; it does not wound their littleness. I know, dear wife, that my opera is a veritable work of art, and therefore do I tremble that its verdict is in the hands of mediocrity. Poor Marianne! You have arrayed yourself for a bridal, and it MAY happen that we go to the funeral ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... primitive, so are the means likely to be primitive. A line is the simplest work of art you can produce. What are the simplest means ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... painter gives him, but soon his art sense craves an expression with thought in it, the imitation, brow-beaten into its proper place and the creative instinct of the artist visible. In other words, he seeks the constructive sense of the man who paints the picture. "The work of art is an appeal to another mind, and it cannot draw out more than that mind contains. But to enjoy is, as it were, to create; to understand is a form of equality."(8) With the horse before the cart and the artist holding the reins, he gets a fresh start, and is in a fair way to comprehend ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... for this work of art?—fifteen, five, name your own price. The gentleman without the elephant is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... insist strongly on one caution, viz. that grammar is not style, and settings which avoid modernisms are not for that reason a fair presentation of the old manner. Nothing is less like a fine work of art than its incompetent imitation. And this practically exhausts, as far as I am aware, the ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... at some future time, but inasmuch as in our great love for art we cannot be surpassed by any other nation, in the same degree we must decidedly refuse to buy a German defeat at the cost of saving a work of art. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... avarice run 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, on which it must have a perpetual credit or it perishes ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Tour,[1] itself 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 ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... As a work of art it is remarkable—almost, indeed, a gallery in itself, comprising as it does portraiture, design, topography, and the delineation of one of the most spirited episodes in religious history. After the magic words "One Pound," ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... speak with less vehemence in reference to those poems which are generally supposed to be permeated with defiance, scorn, and misanthropy. In "Manfred" and "Cain," it was with Byron a work of art to describe the utterances of impious spirits against the sovereign rule of God. Had he not fallen from high estate as an interpreter of the soul, the critics might have seen here nothing more to condemn than in some of the Grecian tragedies, many passages in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... with HERKOMER, the Artist, and Dr. W. W. BALDWIN, Nov. 2d, 1878, the former explained to me that when he would execute a work of art, he just determined it with care or Forethought in his mind, and gave it a rest, as by sleep, during which time it unconsciously fructified or germinated, even as a seed when planted in the ground at last grows upward into the ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... various statues of a religious order. It was in prison, too, that he thought out the Perseus and Medusa. In prison, works like the Pieta were his ambition, but when freedom came the Perseus was uppermost in his mind. Every great work of art is an evolution—the man sees it first as a mere germ—it grows, enlarges, evolves. The Perseus of Cellini was a thought that took years to germinate. The bloody nature of the man and his love of form ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... both in Art and Science. Still, when thus obtained, they will be no more than mere facts, on which we can predicate nothing but that, when they are imitated,—that is, when similar combinations of quantities, &c., are repeated in a work of art,—they will produce the same effect. But why they should is a mystery which the reflective faculties do not solve; and never can, because it refers to a living Power that is above the understanding. In the human figure, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... sorrowing friends stood over his grave as he was laid to rest in Kensal Green; and, as quickly afterwards as it could be executed, a bust to his memory was put up in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti; but, as a likeness, is, I think, less effective than that which was modelled, and then given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and has lately been put into marble, and now stands in the upper vestibule of the club. Neither of them, in my opinion, give so accurate an idea of the ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed upon ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... insisted upon seeing the Indian. There was nothing to do but to point out J. Q. A. Ward's sculptured Indian which stands in the midst of the park, a replica of the one in Central Park, New York, and better mounted, altogether a fine work of art, but— ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... worth enumeratin', we found ourselves in that glorious Court of Honor, and pretty nigh that gorgeous fountain of MacMonnies. This matchless work of art occupies the place of honor amidst the incomparable group of wonders in that Court of Honor, and it deserves it. Yes, indeed! its size is immense, but it don't show it, owin' to the size ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... carefully laundered the mended gown, dried it in the sun and ironed it, partly with her fingers, partly with a tiny iron. Finished, it was a work of art, a frock of rare lace of exquisite design, several times made over, and now, in its last stage, prettier than in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... In discussing, for instance, a modern work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some striking passage, some prominent character; but when do we ever hear any comment on its harmony of construction, on its fulness of design, on its ideal character,—on its essentials, in short, as a work of art? What we hear most valued in the picture, we often find the most neglected in the book,—namely, the composition; and this, simply because in England painting is recognized as an art, and estimated according to definite ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... living at Brighton) as the model for Sir John Vincent's estate,—as well as Grace, Ben Burke, and so on from persons I had seen,—I need not say that my sketches from nature were but outlines to my finished work of art. Simon Jennings, however, is an exact portrait of a man I knew at Brighton. So also with these tales, and others ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... other lifting a cup aloft. It will be seen from even this brief enumeration of a few among the statues of Antinous, how many and how various they are. One, however, remains still to be discussed, which, so far as concerns the story of Antinous, is by far the most interesting of all. As a work of art, to judge by photographs, it is inferior to others in execution and design. Yet could we but understand its meaning clearly, the mystery of Antinous would be solved: the key to the whole matter probably lies here; but, alas! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Sapho—the charge that it exhibits a somewhat inharmonious mixture of sentimentalism and naturalism. Against this charge, which perhaps applies most forcibly to that otherwise almost perfect work of art, Numa Roumestan, Daudet defended himself, but rather weakly. Nor does Mr. Henry James, who in the case of the last-named novel comes to his help against Zola, much mend matters. But the fault, if fault it be, is venial, especially in a friend, though ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... plaster that you will have to hide in your straw pallet. A lock presents itself; the bourgeois has in his pocket a key made by a locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you will be condemned to execute a terrible work of art; you will take a large sou, you will cut it in two plates; with what tools? You will have to invent them. That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking great care of the outside, and you will make on the edges a thread, so that they can be adjusted one ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo |
