"Work of art" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 due, doubtless, to ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... instances. Clemens Alexandrinus takes notice of this kind of [810]worship: and Pausanias, in describing the temple of Hercules at Hyettus in [811]Boeotia, tells us, that there was no statue in it, nor any work of art, but merely a rude stone, after the manner of the first ages. Tertullian gives a like description of Ceres and Pallas. Pallas Attica, et Ceres [812]Phrygia—quae sine effigie, rudi palo, et informi specie prostant. Juno of Samos was little better ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... few tests of excellence so sure as the popular verdict on a work of art a hundred years after its accomplishment. So much time must be allowed for the swing and rebound of taste, for the despoiling of tawdry splendours and to permit the work of art itself to form a public ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... sentimental beauty, almost wholly arising out of the power of art—the representing the imagination. It is when such persons are called upon to see nature in a picture, that they show how imperfect their sight has been. Seeing the representation in a frame, they know it to be a work of art, and generally object to shadow; whereas, could they see the picture placed at an open window or some deceiving position, they would be deceived. Many, knowing the intention is to deceive them, are ready armed with objections, which, however, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... by the Forelock," was a masterpiece of Greek sculpture. A noted Athenian orator, Callistratus, has given us a picture of the work of art: "Opportunity was a boy in the flower of his youth, handsome in mien, his hair fluttering at the caprice of the wind, leaving his locks disheveled. Like Dionysius, his forehead shone with grace, and his cheeks glowed with splendor. With winged feet to indicate swiftness, he ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... a strange sense of its superiority. The better to show its attractions, Clinton Grey had placed the figure near a full-length, gold-framed mirror, beside a marble-topped table. Yet how cheap and tawdry these splendors showed beside this work of art! How cruel was the contrast of their own rough working clothes to this miracle of adornment which that same mirror reflected! And even when Clinton Grey, the enthusiast, looked towards his beloved ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... pretend that Bed and Black (METHUEN), by GRACE S. RICHMOND, is what is known to the superior as a serious work of art or that the men (particularly) of her creating are what would be called likely. But there's a sincerity about the writing which one has to respect. Of her two heroes, Red is Redfield Pepper Burns, the rude and rugged doctor, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... valuable to England than any material benefit in all the books of political economy between Westminster and Birmingham. Greenville chewing wine-glasses at table makes no very pleasant figure, any more than a thousand other artists when they are viewed in the body, or met in private life; but his work of art, his finished tragedy, is an eloquent performance; and I contend it ought not only to enliven men of the sword as they go into battle, but send back merchant-clerks with more heart and spirit to their book-keeping ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of a work of art throws a light upon the mystery of humanity. A work of art is an abstract or epitome of the world. It is the result or expression of nature, in miniature. For, although the works of nature are innumerable ...
— Nature • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... work of art.—It is an oil painting —done in petroleum. It is by the Old Masters. It was the last thing they did before dying. They did this and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... produce a stir, I sought the judgment of sound critics familiar with the works of masters in France and Italy. From them came such [15] replies as the following: "The illustrations of your poem are truly a work of art, and the artist seems quite familiar with delineations from the old masters." I am delighted to find "Christ and Christmas" in accord with the ancient and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the hospital, which have at times thrown Christians ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... gardens was a wonderful forest green with verdure. The palace and the walls were encrusted with precious stones, the roofs and ceilings were made of pearls, so beautifully done that it was a perfect work of art. From the tower of the palace could be seen beyond the forest a sea calm and placid, just like a sheet of glass, and on the sea floated thousands of little boats with all kinds of different sails, which, when caught by the wind, had ...
— Edmund Dulac's Fairy-Book - Fairy Tales of the Allied Nations • Edmund Dulac
... contained in your paper of the 11th. In treating Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe's work as an exaggerated picture of the evils of slavery, I beg to assure you that you do her serious injustice:—of the merits of her book as a work of art, I have no desire to speak,—to its power as a most interesting and pathetic story, all England and America can bear witness,—but of its truth and moderation as a representation of the slave system in the United States, I can testify with the experience ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... princely dinner, as my landlord had made each of the three courses a work of art. The repast was enlivened by an interesting conversation, to which wit and humour were not lacking. After coffee I thanked the abbot with the greatest respect, and accompanied him to his carriage, where the reverend father reiterated his offers of serving me, and thus, well pleased ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... that the first Part is only the merest fragment, and although the subject of Faust is endless and can never be fully treated in any one work of art (the whole poem 'necessarily remaining a fragment,' as Goethe himself said), nevertheless the second Part does solve in one of many possible ways the problem left unsolved by the first half of the poem, namely the final attainment ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... say all this I feel that I quite fail to give an impression of its manly gravity, its strong proportions, or of the lonesome look of its renovated stones as I sat there while the October twilight gathered. It is a real work of art, a high conception. The crypt, into which I was eventually led captive by an importunate sacristan, is quite another affair, though indeed I suppose it may also be spoken of as a work of art. It is a rich museum of relics, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... admitting the work to be a Mosaic, to adopt the reply of its latest German editor to the assertion that it is but a compilation testifying to the most painstaking industry and the consumption of midnight oil, "even so one learns that a Mosaic is a work of art when executed with artistic skill." That he caused the classical and biblical passages flitting before his eyes to be cited in the margin proves chiefly only the excellence of his memory. They are also before our eyes ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... stated, it is thus said, with quaint simplicity:—'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.' Woman the helper of man, not his toy,—not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a HELPER, a doer,—such is the view of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... knew not what to reply to this utterance of an emotion as strange as it was profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a victim to some freak of the artist's fancy? or were these ideas of his produced by the strange lightheadedness which comes over us during the long travail of a work of art. Would it be possible to come to ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... hunger was satisfied the witticisms began to fly. Morten's present was a great wedding-cake. It was a real work of art; he had made it in the form of a pyramid. On the summit stood a youthful couple, made of sugar, who held one another embraced, while behind them was a highly glazed representation of the rising ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Also the greater part of politics they imagine to co-operate with nature, but in a less degree, having more of art, while legislation is declared by them to be wholly a work of art. 'How do you mean?' In the first place, they say that the Gods exist neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature and ...
— Laws • Plato
... little cumbersome, a little sprawling, nevertheless glows with an intensity which gives off heat as well as light. It is more than an exhaustive document upon modern marriage; it is interpretation as well. Clark's Field, a sparer, clearer story, is even more than interpretation; it is a work of art springing from a spirit which has taken fire and has transmuted almost all its abstract conceptions into genuine flesh and blood. That Clark's Field is Mr. Herrick's latest novel heightens the expectation with which one hears that after a silence of ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... lent distinction to his 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" ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... soulless wretch. Unluckily, too, for us, Matifat's business is not amenable to the jurisdiction of the press, and he cannot be made to smart for it through his interests. A druggist is not like a hatter or a milliner, or a theatre or a work of art; he is above criticism; you can't run down his opium and dyewoods, nor cocoa beans, paint, and pepper. Florine is at her wits' end; the Panorama closes to-morrow, and what will become of her she does ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... is nothing more than an automaton, that has been manufactured by Spalanzani and his friend, the wizard Coppelius. This doll can sing, dance and speak like a human being. Spalanzani hopes to become rich by means of this clever work of art. As half of Olympia (this is the doll's name), belongs to Coppelius, Spalanzani buys her from him, paying him by a draft on the Jew Elias, though he knows him to be bankrupt.—Hoffmann has been persuaded by Coppelius ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... will not express it at all, seems to me to be making an instinct into a moral sanction. One must express whatever one desires to express, as clearly and as beautifully as possible, and one must take one's chance as to whether it is a work of art. To hold one's tongue, if anything appears to be worth saying, because one does not know the exact code of the professionals, is as foolish as if a man born in a certain class of society were to say that he would never go to any social gathering except those ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... clay and sand. Wherever the latter had accumulated, or predominated, the gradual working of water had washed it away, and left the more compact body, in some places, so delicately hollowed out, that it seemed rather the work of art than of nature. This singular formation rested on a coarse grit, that showed itself ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... appearance of the second part of "Faust" the magic spell was completely broken. No work of Art of a more chilling, disenchanting character was ever produced. For the striking individuality of the first part, we have here nothing but abstractions; for its deep poetry, symbolism; for its glow and thrilling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... work of art connected with this wonderful mechanism," said the count, after Marie had rolled and unrolled the screen several times. "The cord which releases the screen rings a bell in my room. When I hear the bell I shall know that you have retired; then I shall bring my books and ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... said the superhuman alien from outer space, "I could not just destroy. I have created a work of art." ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... primal inspiration. But he never did that, or even tried to do it. Perhaps, when he came to consider it more carefully, it appeared impossible; perhaps it approved itself ridiculous without experiment. His work of art, such as it was, was a growth from all his thinking and feeling about it; and without that it could no more eventuate in a climax than a tree could ripen fruit without the preliminaries of striking its roots into the ground, coming of the age ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... He had a book in his hand, and he began to scribble a little sketch of Lydia's pose, on a fly-leaf. She looked round and saw it. "You've detected me," he said; "I haven't any right to keep your likeness, now. I must make you a present of this work of art, Miss Blood." He finished the sketch with some ironical flourishes, and made as if ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... cave-dwelling man could not well have drawn the picture of the mammoth unless he had seen that animal, and to admit that man and the mammoth had been contemporaries was to concede the entire case. So soon, therefore, as the full import of this most instructive work of art came to be realized, scepticism as to man's antiquity was silenced ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... 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 attended than on the ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... Phillis's frank answer. "Think what pleasure it will give the poor ladies when their dresses are being tried on. Don't you remember the basket of wax fruit at Miss Slinders's, when we were small children? I thought it the loveliest work of art, and feasted my eyes all the time Miss Slinders was fitting my pink frock. Now, our pictures and china will refresh people's eyes in ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... streamlet of old Spain, or some Arabian wady, exhausted by a year's drought. Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick, troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had been ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... addition to what you know must be the case in every part of the world (the necessity of a previous provision of habitation, 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 irretrievably. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this way and that and looking at it very critically. It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat. I judged the picture to have a valuable quality of resemblance and to have been painted when the model was about twenty-five years old. There ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... against them. Rare indeed they are. When some playwright, as the result of a genuine emotion, makes a drama, in the sheer delight of that emotion, and with a disregard for conventionality, and no hope of box-office approval—then you get a work of art. Incidentally, I may remark that such a work of art is so irresistible that it literally forces the box office to tinkle. It would be ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... have many elements in common, but the second is the greater work of art, and indicates more fairly the scope and vigor of the author's mind. It is written in the same pure, hardy style, strong with Saxon words that admit of no equivocation or misunderstanding; it is illustrated with sketches of outward Nature and tranquil rural beauty, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... impressions, and by so doing make us respond to their moods. Their "beauty and their terror are sublime". But what may seem poetic to us, was invariably a grim reality to the Babylonians. The statue or picture was not merely a work of art but a manifestation of the god or demon. As has been said, they believed that the spirit of the god inhabited the idol; the frown of the brazen image was the frown of the wicked demon. They entertained as much dread of the winged and human-headed ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... kind in France must not be a judgment pronounced upon the individual who is the object of it, and still less an inquiry. The qualities and defects of a man of genius do not constitute the principal business of the artist. Man is now rather examined as a work of art or as an object of science. When reason has made him out, and intellectual curiosity has been satisfied, the wish to understand him is not carried out further. The subject is abandoned, lest the reader ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... his sharp little teeth. It seemed little short of sacrilege to Mrs. Dearborn, whose own children had regarded it for years from an admiring distance, fearing to lay unlawful fingers even on the glass case that protected such a work of art. ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... a Mason may lawfully and even earnestly desire a fortune. If he can fill some fine palace, itself a work of art, with the productions of lofty genius; if he can be the friend and helper of humble worth; if he can seek it out, where failing health or adverse fortune presses it hard, and soften or stay the bitter hours that are hastening it to ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... this time another tray of pretty lacquer is put beside you on the floor and on it is a tiny tray or platter of lacquer on which are placed two little fish browned to perfection, and trimmed with two little cakes of egg and powdered fish, very nicely rolled in cherry leaves. Every dish is a work of art in its arrangement. These two fish are the favorite of the last emperor, and you do not blame him. They are cooked in mirin, a kind of sweet liquor made from sake, and you eat all you can pick off the bones with ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... of the Middle Ages, have held up the 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 ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... superficial resemblance in the substance with which both writers deal, the two stories are more notable in their differences than in their resemblances. If "The Brothers" is less inevitable than "The Black Pool," it is perhaps a more sophisticated work of art, and I am not sure but that its conclusion and the resolution of character that it involves is not more artistically convincing than the end of "The Black Pool." It is certainly a memorable first story by a new writer and would of itself be enough to make a reputation. Mr. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 the "Paradise Lost," ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the torrid zone as Cumberworth's celebrated statuette of the Negro Woman at the Fountain. Indeed, she so strongly reminded me of that figure, that, when I recall the events of her life, as she narrated them to me, I imagine her as a living, breathing impersonation of that work of art. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... of the cave, a superb portal, upwards of seventy feet high, and one hundred and fifty wide, according to the computation of a learned traveller—the rocks which support the great arch so symmetrically disposed as to resemble a work of art. The sun was already high in the heavens, shining with intense brightness on the wild scenery that surrounded us, the rocks and trees and rushing waters; a sensation of awe came over us as we stood ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... 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 said in his attempts to persuade us to give up the idea ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... that the Church had collected and preserved for centuries. This you may read in any of the histories of the Church and times. The Protestants of the present day praise all these works of art now; but if their ancestors had had their way every beautiful work of art would ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... life-size figure of a youth with half-spread wings seated upon the ruins of a street gas-lamp, holding triumphantly high above his head an electric incandescent lamp. Grouped about his feet are a gear-wheel, voltaic pile, telegraph key, and telephone. This work of art was executed by A. Bordiga, of Rome, held a prominent place in the department devoted to Italian art at the Paris Exposition, and naturally appealed to Edison as soon as ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... (in Mirra), "in modern times," would sanction the intrusion of the [Greek: miseto ] into English literature. The early drafts and variants of the MS. do not afford any evidence of this alteration of the plot which, as Byron thought, was detrimental to the poem as a work of art, but the undoubted fact that the Bride of Abydos, as well as the Giaour, embody recollections of actual scenes and incidents which had burnt themselves into the memory of an eye-witness, accounts not only for the fervent heat at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... us less as a defense of Socialism than as a work of art. In a literary sense, Mr. Wells ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Kamakura, of which an illustration is given opposite, is one of the largest in Japan. It is fifty feet high, and, as a work of art, is without a rival. The boss protruding from the forehead is supposed to represent a jewel, ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... works, is described as being in Lincolnshire. Camden says, "In the west part of Kesteven, on the edge of Lincolnshire and Leicestershire, there stands Belvoir Castle, so called (whatever was its ancient name) from the fine prospect on a steep hill, which seems the work of art." Burton expressly says that it "is certainly in Lincolnshire," and the authors of Magna Britannia are of the same opinion; but Mr. Nichols, whose authority on subjects of local history, respecting Leicestershire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... which was a love of notoriety and display. He had a showy house and attractive equipages, and managed to get his name frequently chronicled in the newspapers, now as the leader in some public enterprise or charity, now as the possessor of some rare work of art, and now as the princely capitalists whose ability and sagacity had lifted him from obscurity to the proud position he occupied. He built himself a palace for a residence, and when it was completed and furnished issued tickets of admission, that the public might see in what splendor he was ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... myriad in manifestation, is yet in essence ever one. Atom and universe, man and the world—each is a unit, an organic and coherent whole. The application of this law to art is so obvious as to be almost unnecessary of elucidation, for to say that a work of art must possess unity, must seem to proceed from a single impulse and be the embodiment of one dominant idea, is to state a truism. In a work of architecture the cooerdination of its various parts with one another is almost the measure of its success. We remember any masterpiece—the cathedral of ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... firmly: "I've decided not to go treasure hunting. As a work of art, that map is a treasure in itself, I love it, but I'm going to leave the treasure hunting to Tommy and Kie Wicks and ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... art is immensely important; my hypothesis affords reason for thinking it so. In fact, the great merit of this hypothesis of mine is that it seems to explain what we know to be true. Anyone who is curious to discover why we call a Persian carpet or a fresco by Piero della Francesca a work of art, and a portrait-bust of Hadrian or a popular problem-picture rubbish, will here find satisfaction. He will find, too, that to the familiar counters of criticism—e.g. "good drawing," "magnificent design," "mechanical," "unfelt," "ill-organised," "sensitive,"—is given, what such terms sometimes ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... first in discriminating between what were meant for the figures of the principal personages of the story and the objects of still life depicted in the drawing, though otherwise it was an admirable work of art. ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... examined not the moral but the political man, not his motives but his acts. The terrible was not terrible when it was the deed of a strong will, nor was crime disgraceful when it excited astonishment as a work of art. The terrible way in which Ferdinand of Naples handled the conspiracy of the nobles of his kingdom made him, in the eyes of Italy, not horrible but great; and Macchiavelli speaks of the trick with which ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... exceedingly comical in many instances, and the author put the most notable of these together, and always alluded to them with roars of laughter. The book has never yet received justice at the hands of any literary tribunal. It requires, indeed, a large amount of culture to appreciate it, either as a work of art, or as a living flame-painting of spiritual struggle and revelation. In his previous writings he had insisted upon the sacredness and infinite value of the human soul,—upon the wonder and mystery of life, and its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... repose in Italy, preparing those beautiful descriptions for her Corinne, and finally returning to Coppet, spent a year in writing her book. It was published in Paris, and, says Sainte-Beuve, "its success was instantaneous and universal. As a work of art, as a poem, the romance of Corinne is an immortal monument." Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, called the author the greatest writer in France since Voltaire and Rousseau, and the greatest woman ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... remind ourselves that a work of art was revolutionary in its day, we can be sure that we are dealing with something closer to cultural artifact than to art, and it must be granted that this is true of Macpherson's work; nevertheless, the fact that Ossian aroused the interest of major men of letters ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... daughter? As a man of taste he admires her. I should like to know who would not admire her! I suspect Antoinette of allowing her imagination to become excited about nothing. He talks of her on all occasions in as free and tranquil a fashion as he would talk of a work of art. I find it impossible to believe that he is in love. I have in vain watched his green eyes. I never have ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... the distinguished Feathertop came in its proper place; nothing had been left rude or native in him; a well-digested conventionalism had incorporated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him into a work of art. Perhaps it was this peculiarity that invested him with a species of ghastliness and awe. It is the effect of anything completely and consummately artificial, in human shape, that the person impresses us as an unreality and as having hardly pith enough to cast a shadow ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... much the same; modifications are trifling. Otherwise we could not enjoy any foreign literature. A fine phrase in AEschylus or Dante affects us as if we had read it in Emerson. A structural completeness in a work of art seems the same in the Oedipus Tyrannus as in "The Scarlet Letter." Art has therefore its law; and eccentricity, though sometimes promising as a mere trait of youth, is only a disfigurement to maturer years. It is no discredit to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... the mental eye, from all these elicited materials, his closing argument, which, as we have said, was all the more effective, because profound reasoning and exquisite tact and influence were involved in it as a work of art. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... added with a wink, "a Midway Pleasance in connection with the thing. Mrs. Cedarquist and our friend Hartrath 'got up a subscription' to construct a figure of California—heroic size—out of dried apricots. I assure you," he remarked With prodigious gravity, "it is a real work of art and quite a 'feature' of the Fair. Well, good luck to you, Pres. Write to me from Honolulu, and bon voyage. My respects to the hungry Hindoo. Tell him 'we're coming, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... glittering with all that can make a bar attractive, served by a score or more of the prettiest of bar-maids; along the sides of the room are rows of little tables in carved oak and cherry, each unlike the other, each a work of art; in the corners and upon the walls is a collection of paintings and statuary hardly rivalled in any of the private mansions of Boston. The centre of the room, save for a fountain playing in a jungle of flowering vines, violets, ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... know that man?" he asked, pointing to Northway, who affected a study of some neighbouring work of art. ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... amongst these objects were pictures, pots, textiles, statues, buildings, etc. Mr. Davies's sharp eyes have enabled him to perceive either that my hypothesis—that "significant form" is the essential quality in a work of art—leads to the inclusion of Persian carpets amongst works of art, or that the hypothesis that representation is the essence of art excludes them: I am not sure which. Anyway, this much is certain, either both pictures and carpets can be works of art or they cannot. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... six to twenty pigeon-holes, by a simple process of arithmetic we can get approximately near the period which it takes the poor half-breed's prayer to get from pigeon-hole Alpha to pigeon-hole Omega. But during the process the back of the squatter's application has become a work of art. It is simply delightful to look upon. It not alone contains memoranda and hieroglyphics made in red and blue pen-pencil but it is also beautified by marks made upon it in carmine ink, in ink "la brillanza," ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... and of Dawson's encounter with the War Committee, and of his triumph over the revolting workmen of the north. I have therefore written, as it were, from hand to mouth, more as one who keeps a vagabond diary than as one who consciously plans a work of art. It is as a diary of personal experiences that this book should be regarded. It has no merit of constructive skill, for I have never known what the future would yield to me of material. When Dawson parted with me to return south to the Yard, and to his deserted ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Michele is inevitably the soldier saint of Christendom. It must not be inferred that the success of plastic, skill less that of pictorial, art depends upon the accuracy or vividness with which the presentment "tells its story." Under such a criterion the most popular work of art would necessarily bear the palm of supremacy. But there should be some relation between the statue and the subject-matter. Nobody knew this better than Donatello: he seldom incurred the criticism directed against ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... stones, all crucifixes, images and pictures of God and the saints, 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 beneath its shade ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... more experienced collector, would doubtless have good advice to offer his younger friend, and, an artist himself, would know how to judge correctly a work of art. One record of their friendship in these years is a little etched landscape which Rembrandt made in 1641, showing a bridge near the country estate of the Six family, a place called Elsbroek, near the village ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... concealment of the genital organs by a fig-leaf—a practice supposed to have been initiated by the influence of the Jesuits about the middle of the eighteenth century—is a sound one; or whether this is not the very way to lead to objectionable conversations between children. The child compares the work of art with its own body and with the bodies of others which it has seen, notes the difference at once, and is thereby incited ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... usually brings to her aid when it is most called for. "The chill, damp air under the walnut tree made me feel quite faint just now, and that must have alarmed this doctor of mine. Does he not look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He was startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed." With ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville's arm, smiled at her husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went down the pathway, drawing her traveling companion ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... admitted that the garden is as much a work of art,* or artifice, as anything that can be mentioned. The energy localised in certain human bodies, directed by similarly localised intellects, has produced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be brought about in the state ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... 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 light and air. Now, that the entire work should not be too much finished ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "beetling," that the sun sank in "a 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 ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... and there confirmed for all time. I decided I would stay and spend the rest of my days right there, silently attesting my everlasting devotion to that divine likeness of ideality. Had I not discovered that the whole thing was a work of art, I should have felt positive that she was really alive and merely lay there in peaceful repose. Then a sudden thought passed through my mind which gradually expanded into an irresistible desire; I would press my lips to hers and thereby seal ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... attitude for a writer of gay, satiric comedies, and that its very excess should prevent its being taken for more than a convention. We are not called upon to see satiric comedies all day long, and the question, everlastingly asked by implication of every work of art—'Would you like to live with it?'—is here, as in most other cases, irrelevant. One is reminded that there is more in life than intrigues and cynical comments on them. And one is inclined to put the questions in answer: 'Does a man who really feels the sorrowful things of life, its futile endeavours ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Restoration are first observable the new tendencies, which, although but slightly marked at first, have finally given to the English novel its present importance. An attempt to trace the gradual perfection of this form of literature, its development into a work of art, into a natural history of men, into a truthful reflection of very varied social conditions, will occupy the remainder of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be sparingly used in a work of art. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... 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; and I was not surprised to learn that the landlord ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... exhibition on varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did—didn't he?—and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that's exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up for ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... upper part of her face was the most striking,—the black eyebrows upon such a white, straight forehead. I am rather particular in describing this new face, because—well, perhaps because I remember it so distinctly. While I was studying her as, I might perhaps say, a work of Art, she suddenly raised her eyes, as people always do when they are watched. I looked away in a hurry, though her eyes were just what I wanted to see more of, for they were splendid eyes. "Splendid" is not the right word, though. Deep, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Some of these, like the Knitting Lesson and the Woman Feeding Hens, were, as we have seen, studies for paintings. The picture called Filling the Water-Bottles was, on the other hand, a charcoal drawing, corresponding to no similar painting. It is in itself a finished work of art. ...
— Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll
... vita 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 poet of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... through these pages. Often they have deeper merits, and descend to those fundamental laws of beauty and of religion by which all Christian art must ultimately be tested. Mrs. Jameson has certainly a powerful inductive faculty; she comprehends at once the idea {210} and central law of a work of art, and sketches it in a few vivid and masterly touches; and really, to use a hack quotation honestly for once, "in thoughts which breathe, and words which burn." As an instance, we must be allowed to quote at length this charming passage on angel paintings, so ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... mistake of trying to cramp his undoubtedly beautiful ideas by compressing them into a set form. The Sonata Tragica is more of a traditional sonata than its successors, the Eroica, Op. 50, the Norse, Op. 57, and the Keltic, Op. 59, but as a work of art is less successful. Its subjects are quite fine, showing, individually, great strength of character and tender feeling, but they often appear to have no definite connection with each other. In the first movement ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... charge that applies to all the greater novels save 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 not strictly ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... people all of the time, but you can fool most of 'em most of the time; especially if they live in little old New York. Of course, we didn't pull off such a success as Barnum did; but we had no kick coming when we counted up the receipts for the next week. Merritt's lecture was a work of art and he manufactured language at a rate which would have given Noah Webster nervous prostration when he christened the python 'Old Glory,' and told about its combining the venomous qualities of the cobra and the strength of the boa-constrictor. The python was ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... labor of the commission is finished. On their behalf I present this work of art to the State ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... idle to say with Pfleiderer that it is a pity that, having possessed so much learning, Renan had not possessed more. That is not quite the point. The book has much breadth and solidity of learning. Yet Renan has scarcely the historian's quality. His work is a work of art. It has the halo of romance. Imagination and poetical feeling make it in a measure ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... defects, it may be; and yet not by its defects are we to judge of a work of Art. Of that generous and just canon Punch should have the full benefit. Try him by that, and he has abounding virtues to flood and conceal with lustrous and far-raying light his exceptional errors. To brief notices of some of these—regretting ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... one who had so deeply touched her sympathies. Her last meeting with him was in Paris. He then stood with his sister gazing on Schoffer's picture, which so beautifully represents the gradual rise of the soul through the sorrows of earth to heaven. This beautiful work of art "consists of figures grouped together, those nearest the earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crushing sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above them are those ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... and she hastened to see what had fallen. It was a small clay figure of "Eros",—a copy of a statuette found in the ruins of Pompeii. The nail supporting its bracket had given way. Angela had been rather fond of this little work of art, and as she knelt to pick up the fragments she was more vexed at the accident than she cared to own. She looked wistfully at the pretty moulded broken limbs of the little god as she put them all in a ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the details of visual observation in art is liable eventually to obscure the main idea and disturb the large sense of design on which so much of the imaginative appeal of a work of art depends. The large amount of new visual knowledge that the naturalistic movements of the nineteenth century brought to light is particularly liable at this time to obscure the simpler and more primitive qualities on which ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... he. "Are you mad, Jane? Pray," continued he, veiling his wrath in scornful words, "is it requisite, heroic, or judicious on the eve, or more correctly the morn, of affluence to deposit an unfinished work of art with a mercenary relation? Hang it, Jane! would you really have ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... assimilated the lion. For the heir of all literary studies, according to Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to consider the work of art in its historical setting and its psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work of art under all these aspects, ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... said Marcella, looking at her watch. "Tell me the names again, dear lady"—she bent forward, and laid her hand affectionately on Mrs. Allison's knee. "Your parties are always a work of art." ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Rembrandts which he examined from time to time, half secretly; and if it be true that the loveliest tune imaginable becomes vulgar and insupportable as soon as the public begins to hum it and the hurdy-gurdies make it their own, the work of art which does not remain indifferent to the spurious artists, which is not contested by fools, and which is not satisfied with awakening the enthusiasm of the few, by this very fact becomes profaned, trite, ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... not uncommon, 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
... you could count the seconds between their coming and going. In the midst of these never-ending snow-halls was a frozen lake. It was broken up on the surface into a thousand bits, but each piece was so exactly like the others that the whole formed a perfect work of art. The Snow Queen sat in the very middle of it when she sat at home. She then said that she was sitting on 'The Mirror of Reason,' and that it was the best and only one ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... experience—"the opening," to use George Fox's impressive word—but while it is there it is held in one unbroken synthetic time-span. It is, to revive a scholastic phrase, a totum simul, an all-at-once experience, in which parts, however many, make one integral whole, as in a melody or in a work of art; so that the mystic has a real experience of what we try to express by the word Eternity. It feels as though the usual insulations of our own narrow personal life were suddenly broken through and we were in ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... sumptuously fitted out. Each had sleeping accommodation, in cellars of the ruined houses, running along the main street close to the quarry, nicely lined with wood and canvas to keep the damp out, while the Mess itself was a work of art. ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... sons, were burned. In one of them at Santa Chiara the valuable pictures which that noble, a lover of the fine arts, had collected, were destroyed—the carpets of silk-stuff interwoven with gold, the sumptuous silver vessels, and every sort of work of art, the worth of which was valued at more than fifty thousand ducats. The mob had already become so brutal that they stabbed the beautiful horses in their stalls and threw the lapdogs into the flames, while they trampled down the rare plants ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... society that produced it. Chanted by every minstrel,—known by heart, from beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or clerical,—translated into every tongue,—more intensely felt, if possible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England,—perhaps most effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their great castles in the Holy Land,—it is now best felt at Mont-Saint- Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proof is the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, which invoked Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea at the climax ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... of automatism. As to the first kind of order, it oscillates no doubt around finality; and yet we cannot define it as finality, for it is sometimes above, sometimes below. In its highest forms, it is more than finality, for of a free action or a work of art we may say that they show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event. Life in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolution, is something analogous; ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... a most enchanting view. In the far east, that is, some twenty or five-and-twenty miles away, stretched a lofty chain of mountains, flat-topped and so regular in their outline that they appeared rather the work of art than of nature. Between this range and the nearest one lay a large rich valley vying with the most fertile I have ever seen in an extra-tropical country. In front of us lay another valley which drained a portion of the large one, and in both rose gently swelling hills and picturesque ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... answered, "except as a work of art. You see I worship Fate's Master. I might add that your god doesn't seem to have done much for you, Lady Yva, as out of all your greatness there's nothing left but two people and a lot ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... deny it!" snapped Levitt. "Why shouldn't they see it? They can see the plate of the original in the encyclopaedia. It's a fine copy of a work of art." ...
— The Gift Bearer • Charles Louis Fontenay
... '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 ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... robe; whilst the upper part of the spear is surrounded by a white braid of diamond pattern. To the right is a gnarled thorn stick, from which hangs a coarse, shaggy piece of cloth in yellow, grey, and brown colors, tied with a ribbon; and above it is a leather knapsack.... Evidently this work of art, by its composition, is ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... invention of that invaluable work of art, "The Hairless Author's Paper Pad," which the Baron herewith and hereby strongly recommends to Mr. GLADSTONE, who has so much writing to do with a pad on his knee, and for this purpose Mr. G. would find this the "knee ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... and it was only the addition of a dressing-room of tolerable proportions which had made her quarters so agreeable to her as they proved. The transformation of this room from a severe male dressing-room into the boudoir of a fanciful and luxurious woman, was a work of art of which neither the master nor the mistress of the house had the faintest conception. The Contessa was never at home; so that she was—having that regard for her own comfort which is one of the leading features in ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... shut out his view 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
... of the fact that during the past few days the well-known effigy has been the centre of repeated disturbances, and is already considerably damaged. We are surprised to learn that there are in our midst persons capable of doing violence to a noble work of art merely because its subject is distasteful to them. But even the most civilised communities have their fits of vandalism. ''Tis true, 'tis pity, ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... firmly-constructed edifice, towering aloft on its own self-supported basis, but resting on, and upheld by, some internal principle of necessity. I regretted in it the total absence of what I desired to find; and thus it seemed a mere work of art, serving only by its elegance and exquisite finish to captivate the eye. Nevertheless, I listened with pleasure to this eloquently gifted man, who diverted my attention from my own sorrows to the speaker; and he would have secured my entire acquiescence if he had appealed to my heart ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... lake. Three-quarters of a mile of poling, dragging, and lifting brought us up to another lake, and this proved to be Lake Michikamats. For half a mile or more at its lower end the lake is narrow and shoal. Its bed is a mass of jagged rocks, many of which rise so near to the surface that it was a work of art to find a way among them. A low point ran out north on our left, and from this point to the eastern shore stretched a long line of boulders rising at intervals from the water. This line marks the edge of the shallows, and beyond it the lake is deep and broad and stretches away northeast ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... in silence for some time, divided into two hostile groups, the clouds above waxed ever redder and the evening seemed to grow more peaceful and mild; we could almost fancy we heard the regular breathing of nature as she put the final touches to her work of art—the glorious day we had just enjoyed; when, suddenly, the calm evening air was rent by a confused and boisterous cry of joy which seemed to come from the Rhine. A number of voices could be heard in ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... general lines continue to hold a Gothic semblance, the shrine has many Renaissance features. Regret, however, is almost morbid, in relation to such a perfect work of art. Italian feeling is evident throughout, and the wealth of detail in figures and foliate forms is magnificent. The centre of interest is the little portrait statuette of Peter Vischer himself, according to his biographer, "as he looked, and as he daily went about and ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... work should not trouble himself with the notes as he reads, but merely at the beginning of each chapter read over the notes which belong to the foregoing one. Every glance at the foot-notes must necessarily disturb and injure the development of the tale as a work of art. The story stands here as it flowed from one fount, and was supplied with notes only ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... replaced, like a conceited politician laying hold of a newspaper, and passing judgment by anticipation, as he is cutting the pages, on the occurrences of the world. Nobody cares to recollect that if twenty people, one after the other, treat a work of art in this way, the one-and-twentieth will not find much to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... noticeable in the present instance is, that the writing has lost the sharpness of the graver by use, or returning it into its case; or more probably the case has not been used at all, being cumbersome and set aside as a curious work of art, which indeed it is. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... his final visit, the grateful mother handed to the doctor a handsome pocket-book, which she said she had worked with her own hands. The doctor bowed stiffly, and said, 'Madam, the pocket-book is quite a work of art, and I admire it exceedingly, but my fee ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... engrossed invitation to the Prince's ball having duly arrived from his Secretary the Chevalier O'Sullivan, I ask you to believe that my toilet Tuesday evening was even more a work of art than that of Sunday. In huge disorder scarfs, lace cravats, muffs, and other necessary equipment were littered about the room. I much missed the neat touch of my valet Simpkins, and the gillie Hamish Gorm, whom Major Macleod had put at ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... chiefest work of art divine, Be doom'd in endless discord to repine? No, we should injure Heaven by that surmise, Omnipotence is just, were man ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... guineas for this work of art?—fifteen, five, name your own price. The gentleman without the elephant is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Wagner's "Seigfried" and "Parsifal" are altogether too long to be enjoyed thoroughly. The composer would have done well to eliminate a third of each, for as they are produced they strain the attention to the point of fatigue, and no work of art should ever ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... and I see that you have been annoyed by the howling of the critics over the Cantata. I was greatly so at first, before I had recovered from my amazement at finding a work of art received in this way, sufficiently to think, but now the whole matter is quite plain to me and gives me no more thought, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... outgrowth of such a chapter as "Ideas of Beauty" in the first volume of Modern Painters. Between the author who wrote in 1842, of the necessity of revealing new truths in painting, "This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to his race. God appoints to every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honourably ... there will assuredly ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... 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; and being a permanent record of literature, it records experience which is universal ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... perform the duties of a general when occasion demanded this service, and when that necessity was past could nurse the sick and wounded with all the tenderness of a true womanly nature. It is in every way a noble work of art, combining grace, dignity, and the aristocratic refinement of a high-born lady. The drapery of this and other similar statues is very beautiful, and fully satisfies all artistic demands. We have full proof that such garments were in ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement |
