Various

“ If it be great art, it will always be novel enough; for there will be a great mind behind it, and no two great minds are alike. And if it be novel without being great, how shall we be the better off? There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetish of progress, when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so and shall not care to investigate it further. ”

“ The masterpieces of one time are as the masterpieces of another, and no man may say that the nave of Amiens is finer than the Parthenon or that the Parthenon is nobler than the nave of Amiens. One may say only that each is perfect in its kind, a supreme expression of the human spirit.
Of the art of music I must speak with the diffidence becoming to the ignorant; but it seems to me to consist of two elements and to contain an inspirational art as direct and as simple as that of poetry, and a science so difficult that its fullest mastery is of very recent achievement. ”

“ If we are so careful of our heritage, it is surely from some doubt of our ability to replace it. When art has been vigorously alive, it has been ruthless in its treatment of what has gone before. No cathedral builder thought of reconciling his own work to that of the builder who preceded him; he built in his own way, confident of its superiority. And when the Renaissance builder came, in his turn, he contemptuously dismissed all medieval art as “Gothic” and barbarous, and was as ready to tear down an old façade as to build a new one. ”

“ There is no magic. Whatever is, belongs to science. I am not a necromancer, but a scientist. From boyhood my study has been to solve the subtler secrets of life. I have solved many such. I have solved at last the secret of life itself. It is contained in that golden vial, an elixir to renew the tissues, to repair the cells, of the wasting body. Taken as I direct, you will no longer grow old, but young. The gray in your hair will vanish, the lines will smooth out of your face, your step will become buoyant, your pulses quick, your heart will sing with youth. ”

“ I am not superhuman; I am only human, like yourself. I am not a god, and I cannot make you one. Going back to youth means that you will be young again—young! Don’t you see? It does not mean that you will drag back with you the strength and the wisdom and the sobered impulses of middle age. That would not be youth. Youth cares nothing for such things, and profits by no experience, not even its own.”
Carringford’s eyes had wandered to the yellow vial under the lamp—to the quivering, shimmering fascination of its dancing gold. ”

“ It gradually attains to some sense of relief by the use of degrees of light and less light; but the instant it admits the true shadow, the old brightness and purity of color have become impossible. The line remains dominant for a time, and is carried to the pitch of refinement and beauty, but the love for solid form gradually overcomes it, and in the art of the high Renaissance it takes a second place. Then light and shade begins to be studied for its own sake; color, no longer pure and bright, but deep and resonant, comes in again ”

“ The criminal court-room of the old brick court-house was a revelation of a new and awesome phase of life to the old couple when the jury was impaneled early the next morning. Editha, decorous, though flushed and breathless with excitement, sat among the spectators, who were ranged on each side of the elevated and railed space inclosing the bar, and Benjie, conspicuous among the jury, exercised the high privilege, which most of his colleagues had sought to shirk, of aiding in the administration of his country’s laws. ”

“ One can fancy the laughter over the absinthe in many a Latin Quarter café of those who are not mentally awry, but are merely imitators, poseurs, or charlatans, at learning that their monstrosities, which have exhausted the interest of Paris, have been seriously considered by some American observers. They have only been trying to see how far they could go in fooling the public. But he laughs best who laughs last, and we believe that Americans have too much sense of humor not to see the point of this colossal joke of eccentricity, or to endure its repetition. ”

“ In those days the desire of the best people of the United States came to Washington like the sound of the voice of many waters. Schools and colleges, chambers of commerce and churches, sent in petition piled on petition, and remonstrance heaped on protest. One of the senators who opposed ratification admitted to the President that he had never had so formidable a pressure from his own State as on this question.
That lesson should not be lost. By organization, by watchfulness, by determination, the peace spirit of the land can be given much more effective expression than it has yet had. ”

“ How strange to be a watcher of vineyards upon the tumulus of Marathon!
If you care at all for life in the open, if you have the love of camping in your blood, Greece will call to you at every moment to throw off the dullness of houses, to come and stay under blue heaven and be happy. Yet I suppose the season for all such joys was over when I was in Greece, for I never met any citizens of Athens taking their pleasure in the surrounding country. ”

“ Have we produced anything, I will not say greater, but anything as great as the noblest works of Bach and Beethoven?
Already, and before considering the arts of painting and sculpture, we are coming within sight of our general law. This law seems to be that, so far as an art is dependent upon any form of exact knowledge, so far it partakes of the nature of science and is capable of progress. So far as it is expressive of a mind and soul, its greatness is dependent upon the greatness of that mind and soul, and it is incapable of progress. ”

“ At every stage of its development the art of painting has been a sufficient medium for the expression of a great man’s mind; and wherever and whenever a great man has practised it, the result has been a great and permanently valuable work of art.
For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts: the one essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is a great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you have the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will color him, his art will not be at one time or place precisely what it might be at another ”

“ If it were not for the plentiful admixture of cotton and shoddy to the annual stock of new wool, there would not be enough wool to clothe the people of the earth. Under these conditions, there is no danger of the world failing to make use of American wool. Any considerable curtailment in the production of American wool would have the tendency of raising the world’s price of wool to such an extent as to offer renewed encouragement to the American wool-grower. So much for that. But is it true that it costs so much to raise wool in the United States? ”

“ ONE cannot read of the recent disastrous overflow of the rivers of the Ohio Valley watershed without a sinking of the heart, to think how near is happiness to grief. That thousands, apparently through no fault of their own, should be overwhelmed by the relentless powers of nature, takes us back to a pagan conception of the universe, until we begin to sum up the unpagan-like solidarity in the sympathy of mankind, the touch of human nature that makes the whole world kin. ”

“ Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister’s weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.
“Margaret,” he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, “I can’t see, to be sure, why you should behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the importance of mother’s work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had a sense of duty.” ”

“ Last spring when Wilbur Wright, the aviator, died of typhoid fever at the age of forty-five, several newspapers were honest enough to speak of it as a murder—a murder by the American people, through neglect and ignorance, of a genius who, had he been allowed, might have lived to be of still more distinguished service to the world. ”

“ In the pavement of the processional way, by which the chariots came up to the Temple of Demeter, the chief glory and shrine of Eleusis, are the deep ruts made by the chariot-wheels. The remnants of the hall of the initiated bears witness to the long desire of poor human beings in all ages to find that peace which passeth our understanding. Of beauty there is little or none. ”

“ No wonder that the wool-grower has always been an enthusiastic advocate of a duty on raw wool.
On the other hand, the New England manufacturer, himself a believer in high duties on woolen goods, has been rather skeptical as to the merits of a duty on a raw material of which we have never been able to produce enough, and are producing an ever diminishing share. Hence the New England woolen manufacturer has been as enthusiastic for free wool as the New England shoe manufacturer is for free hides, without losing at the same time his faith in high duties on woolen goods. ”

“ But while we talk so loudly of progress in the arts we have an uneasy feeling that we are not really progressing. If our belief in our own art were as full-blooded as was that of the great creative epochs, we should scarce be so reverent of the art of the past. ”

“ There are archaic statues that are almost as nobly beautiful as any work by Phidias, and more beautiful than almost any work that has been done since his time. There are bits of Gothic sculpture that are more valuable expressions of human feeling than anything produced by the contemporaries of Buonarroti. Even in times of decadence a great artist has created finer things than could be accomplished by a mediocre talent of the great epochs, and the world could ill spare the “Victory” of Samothrace or the portrait busts of Houdon. ”

“ But, oh, the bright simplicity of the life and the country along the way to Marathon! It was like an early world. One looked, and [Pg 92] longed to live in those happy woods like the Turkish Gipsies. Could life offer anything better? The pines are small, exquisitely shaped, with foliage that looks almost as though it had been deftly arranged by a consummate artist. They curl over the slopes with a lightness almost of foam cresting a wave. Their color is quite lovely. The ancient Egyptians had a love color: well, the little pine-trees of Greece are the color of happiness. ”

“ The speed of the growth, as seen by the spectator, is thus magnified about from six thousand to nine thousand times the actual growth of the flowers. So faithfully has the camera performed its task that even the loosening of the petals can be counted one by one, and in one picture, where two buds of a poppy are shown, the growth of one is far enough ahead of the other to show its shattered petals wither and drop while the companion is left in its magnificence. ”

“ Almost as soon as a clear and flexible language has been formed by any people, a great poem has been composed in that language, which has remained not only unsurpassed, but unequaled, by any subsequent work. Homer is for us, as he was for the Greeks, the greatest of their poets; and if the opinion could be taken of all cultivated readers in those nations that have inherited the Greek tradition, it is doubtful whether he would not be acclaimed the greatest poet of the ages. ”

“ Two favorite devices of the trickster are brought into play in a recent film which shows a cleverly produced romance woven about such an absurdity as the painting of a landscape by the switching of a cow’s tail. The film tells the story of a ne’er-do-well, in love, pretending to study art. The father frowns on the match, but promises his favor if the son will produce an example of his skill. In desperation the brush and palette are taken to a field, and while the lovers are despairing, a friendly cow approaches the easel. ”