Take any noble musical air, and you find, on examining it, that not one even of the faintest or shortest notes can be removed with...out destruction to the whole passage in which it occurs; and that every note in the passage is twenty times more beautiful so introduced, than it would have been if played singly on the instrument. Precisely this degree of arrangement and relation must exist between every touch and line in a great picture. You may consider the whole as a prolonged musical composition: its parts, as separate airs connected in the story; its little bits and fragments of colour and line, as separate passages or bars in melodies; and down to the minutest note of the whole--down to the minutest touch,--if there is one that can be spared--that one is doing mischief.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Music has often been compared with language itself, and the comparison is quite legitimate. While it combines easily with actual l...anguage, it also speaks a language of its own, which it has become a platitude to call universal. To understand the significance of the organizing factors of rhythm, melody, harmony, tone color and form, the analogy of a familiar language is helpful. Music has its own alphabet of only seven letters, as compared with the twenty-six of the English alphabet. Each of these letters represents a note, and just as certain letters are complete words in themselves, so certain notes may stand alone, with the force of a whole word. Generally, however, a note of music implies a certain harmony, and in most modern music the notes take the form of actual chords. So it may be said that a chord in music is analogous to a word in language. Several words form a phrase, and several phrases a complete sentence, and the same thing is true in music. Measured music corresponds to poetry, while the old unmeasured plain-song might be compared with prose.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
For youth is a frail thing, not unafraid. Firstly inclined to take what it is told.... Firstly inclined to lean. Greedy to give Faith tidy and total. To a total God.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king--and of a King of England too, and thin...k foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms--I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My loving people,--We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed mu...ltitudes for fear of treachery; but, I do assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When at times the mob is swayed To carry praise or blame too far,... We may take something like a star To stay our minds on and be staid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A picture wants solidity, a statue wants colour. But we see the want of colour as a palpably glaring defect, and we do not see the... want of solidity, the effects of which to the spectator are supplied by light and shadow. A picture is as perfect an imitation of nature as is conveyed by a looking-glass; which is all that the eye can require, for it is all it can take in for the time being. A fine picture resembles a real living man; the finest statue in the world can only resemble a man turned to stone. The one is an image, the other a cold abstraction of nature. It leaves out half the visible impression.... It appears to me that sculpture, though not proper to express health or life or motion, accords admirably with the repose of the tomb; and that it cannot be better employed than in arresting the fleeting dust in imperishable forms, and in embodying a lifeless shadow. Painting, on the contrary, from what I have seen of it in Catholic countries, seems to be out of its place on the walls of churches; it has a flat and flimsy effect contrasted with the solidity of the building, and its rich flaunting colours harmonize but ill with solemnity of the surrounding scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into... account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »