“ The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life. ”
George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty (1896). copy citation
| Author | George Santayana |
|---|---|
| Source | The Sense of Beauty |
| Topic | art life |
| Date | 1896 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26842/26842-h/26842-h.htm |
Context
“They are offensive, not in themselves, — for nothing is intrinsically ugly, — but by virtue of our present demand for something different. A prison as gay as a bazaar, a church as dumb as a prison, offend by their failure to support by their aesthetic quality the moral emotion with, which we approach them. The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life. This is the consequence of the superficial stratum on which they flourish; their roots, as we have seen, are not deep in the world, and they appear only as unstable, superadded activities, employments of our freedom, after the work of life is done and the terror of it is allayed.”
source
