The inside of an Englishman's head can be very fairly compared to a Murray's Guide: a great many facts, but few ideas; a great dea...l of exact and useful information, statistics, figures, reliable and detailed maps, short and dry historical notes, useful and moral tips by way of preface, no all-inclusive vision, and no relish of good writing. It is a collection of good, reliable documents, a convenient body of memoranda to get a man through his journey without help. A Frenchman requires an agreeable shapeliness in every piece of writing and every article about him. The Englishman can be satisfied with utility. A Frenchman enjoys ideas as such and for their own sake; an Englishman regards them as instruments of foresight or mnemonics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My weary limbs are scarcely stretched for repose, before red dawn peeps into my chamber window, and the birds in the whispering le...aves over the roof, apprise me by their sweetest notes that another day of toil awaits me. I arise, the harness is hastily adjusted and once more I step upon the tread-mill.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ratcliffe was a great statesman. The smoothness of his manipulation was marvelous. No other man in politics, indeed no other man w...ho had ever been in politics in this country, could--his admirers said--have brought together so many hostile interests and made so fantastic a combination. Some men went so far as to maintain that he would "rope in the President himself before the old man had time to swap knives with him." The beauty of his work consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of principle. As he wisely said, the issue now involved was not one of principle but of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The night is itself sleep And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,... Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gi...ves forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A little black thing among the snow Crying "'weep, 'weep," in notes of woe!... "Where are thy father & mother? say?" "They are both gone up to the church to pray.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you!... The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The contrast between Leonardo and Michelangelo is an allegory of the arts of modern times. Leonardo left copious notes of his obse...rvations on nature and the world around him, but little about his feelings or his inner life. Michelangelo, in his letters, his poetry, in biographies by his friends and students Vasari and Condivi, in conversations with Francisco de Hollanda and others, left us vivid revelations and eloquent chronicles of himself. Leonardo, the self-styled "disciple of experience," was a hero of the effort to re-create the world from the shapes and forms and sensations out there. But Michelangelo, prophet of the sovereign self, found mysterious resources within. These two greatest figures of Italian Renaissance art dramatized a modern movement from craftsman to artist. If Leonardo could be called the Aristotle--practical-minded organizer and surveyor of experience--Michelangelo would be the Plato, seeker after the perfect idea.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »