Quotes: Aristocracy. Art.

NOTE: The statement in bold-face is a brief summary of the quote, or the quote stands by itself and needs no simplification. The number to the left is the page number.

Aristocracy
Aristocracy 889 Let no historic documents provide an excuse for lording it over other people. "And, henceforth, let no man dare to show a piece of musty parchment, as his warrant for lording it over his fellows!" Hawthorne: “Earth’s Holocaust”

Aristocracy 889 No one should be privileged because of ancestors. "But from this day forward, no mortal must hope for place and consideration, by reckoning up the moldy bones of his ancestors!" Hawthorne: “Earth’s Holocaust”

Art
Art 711 I need to study the sculpture in order to understand the spirit of the sculptor. "I therefore turned away, with merely a passing glance, resolving on some future occasion to brood over each individual statue and picture, until my inmost spirit should feel their excellence." Hawthorne: “A Virtuoso’s Collection”

Art 911 "…for if I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form, and give it motion…." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 916 The artist must extend his spirit of beauty by putting it into a material form. "Alas, that the artist, whether in poetry or whatever other material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his ethereal domain and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 916 The vision of beauty can only imperfectly be copied in a material form. "Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas, as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters, who have arrayed the world in a dimmer or fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of their visions." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 917 "…now that you are so taken up with the notion of putting spirit into machinery." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 922 The ideal of creating beauty in machinery as God did with all living creatures. "In his idle and dreamy days, he had considered it possible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery; and to combine with the new species of life and motion, thus produced, a beauty that should attain to the ideal which nature had proposed to herself, in all her creatures…." Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 926 Why go to the trouble of creating a butterfly when scores of them are available on any afternoon? "Do you suppose any mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly—or would put himself to the trouble of making one, when any child may catch a score of them in a summer’s afternoon?" Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 927 So long as it is beautiful, why ask who created it? "Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful?" Hawthorne: “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 928 So you have created beauty. So what? What is its practical use? “Well that does beat all nature!” cried Robert Danforth [watching the mechanical butterfly], bestowing the heartiest praise that he could find expression for… “But what then? There is more real use in one downright blow of my sledge-hammer, than in the whole five years’ labor that our friend Owen has wasted on his butterfly” “The Artist of the Beautiful”

Art 291 "The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity." Maupassant. 1887. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Art 304 "Art is man’s nature." Edmund Burke. 1791. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Art 306 Works of art provide the standards by which they are to be judged. "Genuine works of art carry their own aesthetic theory implicit within them and suggest the standards according to which they are to be judged." Goethe. 1808. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Art 310 Ugly artifacts can soon seem beautiful in a beautiful landscape. "That nasty little railway station, devoid of taste and style, becomes an element of beauty in the landscape which at first made it ugly." Remy De Gourmont. 1905. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Art 10 Abstract art defined. "Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered." Al Capp. Portable Curmudgeon.

Art 30 "True art is to conceal art." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Art 30 "Art is long, life is short." Latin. Dictionary of Foreign Terms

Art 317 Art is not rigid as a scientific formula or theological dogma. "Art...cannot be narrowed into the rigidity of a scientific formula or a theological dogma." Oscar Wilde, “ ‘The True Critic’.” 1891. Gross, ed. Essays.

Art 318 Art is not inspired, but it inspires. "[Art] does not spring from inspiration, but it makes others inspired." Oscar Wilde, “ ‘The True Critic’.” 1891. Gross, ed. Essays.

Art 68 If art does not help us get through life, it's useless. "...I can’t see any use in this high-art stuff that doesn’t encourage us day-laborers to plod on." Sinclair Lewis, Main Street.

Art 150 In America, art is as monetarily rewarding as any other business. "In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman…has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to have as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry." Lewis, Babbitt.

Art 672 The only art is to observe the streets and collect what is happening. "This is the only art I’ve mastered, Father—walking these streets and letting the senses collect what is routinely there." DeLillo, Underworld.

Art and life 131 "Life is earnest; art is joyous." Schiller. German. Dictionary of Foreign Terms