Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts--the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of ...their art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and... greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A woman cannot do the thing she ought, Which means whatever perfect thing she can,... In life, in art, in science, but she fears To let the perfect action take her part And rest there: she must prove what she can do Before she does it,--prate of woman's rights, Of woman's mission, woman's function, till The men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, "A woman's function plainly is ... to talk." Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
'Stay--stay with us!--rest--thou art weary and worn!'--... And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay;-- But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn, And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it. Thou art so true that thoughts of thee suffice... To make dreams truths and fables histories; Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I n...ow speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is th...e madness of art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Popular art is dominated throughout by the star system, not only in its actors but in all its elements, whatever the medium. Every... work of art, to be sure, has its dominant elements, to which the rest are subordinate. But in popular art it is the dominant ones alone that are the objects of interest, the ground of its satisfaction. By contrast, great art is in this sense pointless; everything in it is significant, everything makes its own contribution to the aesthetic substance. The domain of popular art is, paradoxically, an aristocracy, as it were: some few elements are singled out as the carriers of whatever meaning the work has while the rest are submerged into an anonymous mass. The life of the country is reduced to the mannered gestures of its king. It is this that gives the effect of simplification and standardization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their nurses' in...structions, our knowledge must rest concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »