Art quotes — Page 3

The Innocents Abroad (1869), Chapter XXVIII. Near the close of the long Rome discussion Twain says that the surest way to stop writing about Rome is to stop, immediately before abandoning his attempted guide-book chapter. Verified against the scan-backed 1869 first edition.

The Innocents Abroad (1869), Chapter XXVIII. In the same closing Rome passage Twain says he has drifted for a hundred manuscript pages without knowing where to commence, turning the abundance of material into a joke about structure and authorship. Verified against the scan-backed 1869 first edition.

The Innocents Abroad (1869), Chapter XLVIII. Twain criticizes travel writers who frame rhapsodic pictures and later pilgrims who see through those authors’ eyes and speak with their language instead of observing independently. Verified against the scan-backed 1869 first edition.

The Last Man, Introduction, represented by Project Gutenberg #18247. Shelley's sentence follows her fictional Sibylline-leaves framing and reflects on how the imaginative labour of shaping the narrative helped her through solitude and loss. It belongs to authorial/literary autobiography around the novel's frame, not clinical mental-health guidance or evidence that tragic narration has the same effect for every reader.

A Vindication of the Rights of Men, opening letter to Edmund Burke, second edition (1790); this sentence follows Wollstonecraft’s refusal to disguise her sentiments behind courtly politeness.

'The Study of Poetry,' opening passage in the Matthew Arnold selection represented by Project Gutenberg #12628. Arnold begins by quoting his own claim that 'The future of poetry is immense' and then makes it the governing thought for his essay on poetry's critical and sustaining role. This is Victorian literary-critical forecast and cultural argument, not an empirical prediction that poetry will replace every other source of knowledge or support.

The Importance of Being Earnest, Act II; Miss Prism. Project Gutenberg #844 preserves the exact line in the complete Act II text. The Samuel French acting-text witness represented elsewhere on this source hub omits this Cecily / Miss Prism happy-ending exchange, so this record deliberately uses the complete-text witness rather than a guessed scan page.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890 Lippincott magazine text, Chapter 2; Lord Henry praises Dorian’s beauty and youth.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; the final aphorism of Wilde’s aesthetic manifesto.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; the first aphorism in Wilde’s statement of aesthetic principles.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; one of Wilde’s epigrams about art and books.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; immediately follows the statement rejecting moral and immoral categories for books.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891 edition, Preface; Wilde distinguishes different ways readers and viewers respond to beauty.

A Defence of Poetry, written 1821 and first published posthumously in 1840; Wikisource transcription. This is the essay’s concluding sentence and summarizes Shelley’s historical literary theory about poetry’s indirect cultural and political influence, not literal legislative authority.

Ode to the West Wind, opening line; Shelley addresses the autumn wind directly.

“To S. M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works,” published in Wheatley’s 1773 Poems and represented by Poetry Foundation. The poem addresses Scipio Moorhead within Wheatley’s explicitly Christian artistic vocabulary; “deathless glories” carries religious as well as artistic meaning.

The Republic, Book III, Jowett translation; the passage connects musical and literary form with simplicity of character.

Self-Reliance; Emerson gives the imperative while arguing for originality, self-trust, and resistance to imitation rather than dependence on another person’s model.

The American Scholar; Emerson argues that books should awaken independent thought rather than replace it.

The American Scholar, in Emerson’s discussion of the influence and proper use of books.

To Cuba and Back, Chapter XVI, “Havana: Worship, Etiquette and Humanitarianism,” Project Gutenberg #33455. Dana reflects that poetry and music are natural expressions of the deepest emotions while observing Catholic worship in Havana. It is nineteenth-century first-person travel, aesthetic and religious observation rather than an empirical law about emotion or communication.

“Andrea del Sarto,” first published in Men and Women (1855), represented by Poetry Foundation. The line is spoken by Browning’s fictionalized Renaissance painter Andrea del Sarto while reflecting on artistic perfection, ambition and limitation; it is dramatic monologue rather than Browning speaking autobiographically.

“Delight in Disorder,” from Hesperides (1648), represented by Project Gutenberg #1211. The poem is a seventeenth-century lyric of attraction and dress; its period language is preserved as aesthetic poetry rather than a modern norm about appearance.

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature”; Project Gutenberg #492. “Difficulty” here concerns literary form and craft, not a universal claim that hardship automatically makes things better.

Essays in the Art of Writing, “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature,” represented by the 1905 Chatto & Windus edition in Project Gutenberg #492. The collection is posthumous; the excerpt concerns literary aesthetics.

“The Open Window,” collected in Beasts and Super-Beasts, Project Gutenberg #269. The line follows Vera’s invented explanation for Framton Nuttel’s terrified departure; it is comic fictional narration about a deceptive storyteller.

Rasselas, Chapter X; spoken by Imlac in his account of learning the poet’s craft through broad observation.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles broadens his defence of labour from material production to art, literature, science and knowledge; the universal wording is his historical moral claim, not an empirical rule that effort alone guarantees greatness.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The “they” refers to earlier generations whose tools, fabrics, art and science are presented as an inherited store of useful labour in Smiles’s historical account.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles moves from mutual dependence among workers to the value added by labour and skill; “vulgarest” preserves the period wording for common or ordinary things.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The phrase completes Smiles’s account of practical knowledge passing from one generation to another through teaching and example, preserving art, handicraft, tools and materials.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Immediately after linking greatness in art, literature and science with labour, Smiles rhetorically defines genius as a capacity for intense and sustained effort; it is not treated as a modern psychological finding.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence immediately follows the poetry example and presents substantial work as the product of repeated effort and failure; the absolute wording is Smiles’s rhetorical generalization.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. The sentence follows Smiles’s claim that useful and beautiful thoughts arise from sustained intellectual work and uses poetry as one example of painstaking creative labour.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles contrasts inherited material wealth with the more durable inheritance of useful human skill and labour transmitted across generations by teaching and example.

Thrift, Chapter I, “Industry,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles applies the chapter’s labour argument to intellectual and creative production, listing study, observation, research and diligent elaboration as the work behind useful and beautiful thought.

Religio Medici, represented by Project Gutenberg #586. Browne develops this sentence inside an explicitly Christian natural-theology argument about providence, creation and the beauty of living forms. It is historical religious philosophy, not a scientific definition of nature.

On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, the lecture on the Hero as Man of Letters.

“An August Midnight,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The line is poetic speculation about nonhuman knowledge rather than a scientific claim about insect cognition.

“An August Midnight,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The five include the speaker and small creatures gathered around his writing table.

“Postponement,” collected in Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898), Project Gutenberg #3167. The poem's landscape frames a delayed relationship encounter and is not generic weather description.

“The Darkling Thrush,” collected in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem first appeared at the turn of the century; this collection uses the represented collection as source identity.

“The Darkling Thrush,” Poems of the Past and the Present; Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem's final hope remains uncertain to the speaker rather than becoming a guarantee of optimism.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The corpse comparison is figurative seasonal language inside the poem.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. Floral death is poetic seasonal imagery, not literal human bereavement.

Song of Myself, 1882 text; the line follows “I exist as I am, that is enough,” which already exists separately in this collection.

Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Wordsworth,” printed page 41 in the Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. Pater says that the contrast between Wordsworth’s higher and lower poetic moods “makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry.” This remains Pater’s critical judgment about aesthetic training, not an experimentally established educational outcome.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. The following sentences extend the point across periods and schools of taste.

The Renaissance, “The School of Giorgione”; Project Gutenberg #2398. The surrounding paragraph explains that other arts strive to reduce the separation between matter and form.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398, represented sixth-edition text. The phrase introduces Pater’s method of aesthetic criticism.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. “These impressions” refers to responses produced by art, landscape, personality and other aesthetic objects.

The Song of the Lark, Part VI, Chapter X, Project Gutenberg #44. ‘Artistic growth is... a refining of the sense of truthfulness’ is narrator reflection immediately after Harsanyi calls passion the artist's ‘open secret’ and as Thea Kronborg comes into fuller command of her mature performance. It belongs to Cather's fictional account of artistic formation and performance, not an empirical measurement of artistic development or a guarantee that all artists mature in the same way.

Opening of “Auguries of Innocence”; Blake places vastness inside tiny natural forms.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, “Proverbs of Hell,” represented by Project Gutenberg #45315 at printed page 16. Gutenberg regularizes the line to “imagined”; Blake’s engraved text is often transcribed with historical spelling and punctuation. The proverb is part of Blake’s deliberately paradoxical infernal-wisdom sequence, not a literal claim that every imagined thing will eventually be proved.

Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “The Beauty of Life”; Project Gutenberg #3773. Morris presents this as a design and household principle inside a larger social argument.

Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “Making the Best of It”; Project Gutenberg #3773. The sentence addresses artistic workmanship rather than claiming every form of labor is art.

Hopes and Fears for Art, lecture “The Art of the People”; Project Gutenberg #3773. The counsel is explicitly directed to people studying or practicing art.

Signs of Change, lecture “Useful Work versus Useless Toil”; Project Gutenberg #3053. “Thus” refers to creative work engaging mind, memory, imagination and bodily effort.

Signs of Change, lecture “The Aims of Art”; Project Gutenberg #3053. The passage belongs to Morris’s socialist argument about labor, leisure and art in daily life.

Signs of Change, lecture “Useful Work versus Useless Toil,” beginning on printed page 141, Project Gutenberg #3053. Morris defines the hope that makes work worth doing as hope of rest, useful product and pleasure in the work itself, then summarizes those three elements in the retained sentence. It remains socialist moral and economic argument about labor, not a universal workplace-satisfaction metric.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5.

Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 1, Orsino; 1922 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by George Henry Nettleton, printed page 1 / Wikisource scan leaf 13. “If music be the food of love, play on” opens Orsino’s attempt to use excess music to surfeit and extinguish his appetite for love. It remains fictional dramatic speech shaped by Orsino’s self-dramatizing desire, not Shakespeare speaking autobiographically or a modern psychological claim about music and emotion.

The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 13, Project Gutenberg #37134; the surrounding paragraph explicitly says detail need not be eliminated.

The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 10, Project Gutenberg #37134; Strunk immediately qualifies the rule by noting legitimate uses of passive construction.

The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 13, Project Gutenberg #37134; this sentence introduces the explanation of “Omit needless words.”

The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 16, Project Gutenberg #37134; the following examples focus on avoiding misplaced modifiers and broken relationships.

The Elements of Style, Chapter III, Rule 8, Project Gutenberg #37134; the book discusses exceptions for very short subjects and rapid narrative.

“She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways,” second stanza.

The Tables Turned, final stanza; the speaker urges his friend to close the books and bring a receptive heart outdoors.