Anima

“ The bending heavens arching so grandly over us, so studded with sparkling joy-lights, and animated with the eternal cotillion of the skies, invites to no such irreverent repining. Creation's wide field of animated existence inspires no such moodiness and fretfulness of spirit. ”

“ And what if All of animated nature Be but as Instruments diversely framed That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps One infinite and intellectual Breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? ”

“ Yet when those arts, that skill, of which even the success teaches not the principle, even the process discovers not the secret resources, draw back, by means intelligible and visible, but through causes indefinable, the fleeting breath to its corporeal habitation; animation instantly returns, and the soul, with all its powers, revives! ”

“ Thus, as among savage tribes, the soul is actually identified with the shadow or the breath, the use of such words as σκιά, πνεῦμα, umbra, anima, shade, and spirit, may be held to show the derivation of the civilised conception of the soul from the same primitive and savage idea. ”

“ An eye that sparkled with fire, a mouth that glowed with animation—cheeks warmly colored, and a contour full of vivacity, seemed to denote properties of mind and heart equally valuable and attractive. ”

“ Every incident of motion and of energy is seized upon with indescribable delight, and every line of the composition animated with a force and fury which are now no longer the mere expression of a contemplated external truth, but have origin in some inherent feeling in the painter's mind. ”

“ Something had passed out of them all, some essential quality which united them to reality, some inner secret of being without which the animate and the inanimate alike became no better than phantoms. The spirit which made life vital had gone out of the world. ”

“ I became animated, and as it were awakened, by the fresh intelligent life which spoke in that lovely, animated woman. There is nothing commonplace, nothing conventional in her. Everything is clear, peculiar, living, and above all, good. ”

“ Yet it is not deemed wonderful that persons seeing an article which, at the first glance, strikes them as being beautiful, should conceive instantly a desire to possess it, and call it their own. Why should there be a difference between the emotions raised by the inanimate and the animate? ”

“ What is this bloom and what purpose does it serve? Is there anything analogous in animated nature? It is the coup de grace, the last touch and perfection of any work, a thin elysian veil cast over it, through which it may be viewed. It is breathed on it by the artist, and thereafter his work is not to be touched without injury. It is the evidence of a ripe and completed work on which the unexhausted artist has breathed out of his superfluous genius. ”

“ Where all the treasures that inanimate nature can furnish are scattered in profusion—where the air is fragrant with perfume, and vocal with melody, how vainly do we look for the freshness and animation, and the simplicity and single-mindedness of buoyant and delighted youth! ”

“ To such we must then adjoin thirdly, the soul, which gives animation to the tones, rounds them off in a free totality, and gives to them a spiritual expression in their temporal movement and their real sound. ”

“ And why should we not join in the chorus of all animate and inanimate things, which, at the touch of light, quiver, and thrill, and betray in a thousand languages the magical, rapturous stimulus of that contact? By instinct, and spontaneously, we seek it everywhere, always happiest when it is found. ”

“ But the artist himself then attributes a hidden meaning to that which he has created. Astonishment at his creation fuses with his pleasure in it, and his wonder at the picture that he has produced makes of it, when animated and retransformed by the imagination, a magical object. ”

“ Where they beheld only a drop of rain slowly rolling down the window-glass, I saw a universe of beings animated with all the passions common to physical life, and convulsing their minute sphere with struggles as fierce and protracted as those of men. ”

“ The imagination shuns to reveal its workings, unless it can clothe them in some lovely and palpable shape, and create into existence the high romance, the mournful song, the animated canvass, or the carved marble ”

“ That happy spirits round him play,
And animate the magic lay:
Their floating forms his fancy sees,
And hears their music in the breeze.
Then, while the airy numbers die,
He wakes his sweetest harmony ”

“ In speaking of life here, we speak not only of the condition of animation, but of all that successive experiences, successive enlargements of the range of thought, action, and sympathy, have built into, or worked into, the human consciousness. ”

“ The immense gulf, popularly made between the animate and the inanimate, thus turns out to be an unfounded illusion; and the whole universe reveals itself as an unfathomable series, or congeries, of living personalities, united by the presence of the omnipresent ether which fills universal space. ”

“ The various forms of animated life present to him whose heart is at peace with God through the blood of his Son an indescribable charm. He sees in the calm beauties of nature such abundant provision for the welfare of humanity and animate existence. ”

“ The supreme aim now was to bring the intimate life of soul, the seriousness and the loftiness of religious emotion into harmony with the animation, the actual presence of characters and forms both in its corporeal and spiritual aspect, in order that the bodily configuration in its pose, movement, and colour, may not simply remain an external framework, but become itself essentially an expression of spirit and life, and by virtue of that expression, made throughout all its parts wholly the reflex of soul-life no less than of external form, reveal a beauty without break or interruption. ”

“ Now it is part of the ideality of the highest sort of dramatic poetry, that it presents us with a kind of profoundly significant and animated instants, a mere gesture, a look, a smile, perhaps—some brief and wholly concrete moment— into which, however, all the motives, all the interests and effects of a long history, have condensed themselves, and which seem to absorb past and future in an intense consciousness of the present. ”

“ They painted one another, and they painted themselves, with realistic fidelity. The lights and shadows are alike defined. We know their joys and their sorrows, their passions and their follies, their tastes and their antipathies. Their inmost life has been revealed. They animate, as living figures, a whole class of literature which they were largely instrumental in creating, and upon which they have left the stamp of their own vivid personality. ”

“ There is reason to believe, how ever, that the type of all the forms in which the tendency manifests itself, is to be discovered in the conception of the human soul. Evidently the notion of an animating, separable, and surviving soul commends itself as the ready explanation of many familiar phenomena, and the appropriate instrument of a philosophy which ascribes animation to nature at large ”

“ The actual Life of the Spiritual in the phenomena of Nature and in human relationships, animates and spiritualises them in themselves, and establishes in turn a special relation of the subjective feeling and soul of the Poet to the objects of which he sings. ”

“ The more energetic, the more spasmodically potent, are the throes of nature towards her own re-establishment in the cases of suspended animation—by drowning, strangling, &c.—the more keen is the anguish of revival. ”

“ To a fellow of warm imagination and vigorous constitution, such a scene is calculated to create sensations that must send the circling current into rapid motion, and animate the heart with thrilling raptures of delight. ”

“ It is one of those tales which are peculiarly calculated to beguile the dreary leisure of a long winter evening, and are even attractive and intelligible to childhood, while animated by fervent truth in the delineation of character and passion, and invested with the embellishments of poetry lowering itself, as it were, to the simplicity of the subject, they transport even manhood back to the golden age of imagination. ”

“ But without soaring so high, the mind is frequently in a tone to relish chaste and moderate ornament; such as comparisons that set the principal object in a strong point of view, or that embellish and diversify the narration. In general, when by any animating passion, whether pleasant or painful, an impulse is given to the imagination; we are in that condition wonderfully disposed to every sort of figurative expression, and in particular to com{27}parisons. ”

“ His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. ”

“ There is usually such an expressive animation in their look and in their utterances; they have the freshness of their new life glowing upon them; and when speaking of what they know, and testifying of what they have seen and felt, they do it with a simplicity and earnestness which has a fine and powerful influence over our spirits. ”

“ Every savage observes not only that he casts a shadow, but that shadows attend all inanimate objects that stand so as to intercept the light, and as shadows move as do objects that gives rise to the idea of animation. Hence we have genii, dryads, naiads, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. To fortify this belief we have echoes, which give voice to animate and inanimate objects. Movement and voice are the universal accompaniment of animation. ”

“ If it is the love of that which your work represents—if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you—if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty and human soul that moves you—if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fulness thereof. ”

“ Lely on animated canvas stole The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul. ”

“ Animation, force, beauty, dramatic contrast, vividness, variety, are the qualities that will more or less serve, according to the style of the composition. Aptness in the story or anecdote, facility in graphic illustration, readiness in expressing emotion, happiness in the imitative faculty, for touching off the eccentric in character or incident, are talents that come into play, and in the exercise of these, gesture of course has an important place. ”

“ We have developed to a very high pitch this knack of sounding the feelings of others, and when we are in the presence of any one else we bring this faculty of ours into play almost involuntarily,—let the inquirer observe the animation of a woman's countenance and notice how it vibrates and quivers with animation as the result of the continual imitation and reflection of what is going on around her. ”

“ THE ANIMATION OF ART.—Art raises its head where creeds relax. ”

“ nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. ”

“ I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store. ”

“ Ma.How comes it to pass then, that when it is there where it loves, it yet animates the Body it is gone out of? And if it animates when it loves any where, how is that called a dead Body which it animates? ”

“ Most of these stories have preternatural or supernatural elements, and even such as have no such elements have still the atmosphere of wonder, and those fanciful or fantastic interpretations characteristic of the folk-imagination.
2. Märchen, or what we call "nursery tales"—those told for artistic pleasure, pure imaginative play, the creative exercise of the art-instinct. They may or may not exhibit the supernatural or preternatural elements; in some of them animals are among the actors. ”

“ Thou shalt climb from song to sleep;
From sleep to dream and song once more;—
Sleep well, sweet friend, sleep well, dream deep!
THE ACTOR
Glorious that ancient art!—
In thine own form to show the fire and fashion
Of every age and clime, of every passion
That dwells in man's deep heart!
Player, play well, not meanly,
Thy part in life, as on the mimic stage!
From highest thought is born art's noblest rage:
Live, act, end all, serenely! ”

“ What grotesque fantastic shapes must have come tumbling, rolling, crawling, dangling, dancing, prancing, floundering, flopping, striding, sliding, ambling, shambling, scrambling, stumbling, bundling, and trundling into her mind’s eye, to so startle her features from their propriety! What face-making faces, with telegraphic brows—rolling, reeling, goggling, ogling, hard-winking, and soft-blinking eyes—and grinning, gaping, pinching, puckering mouths must have grimaced at her to put her steady countenance so out of countenance! What is there in a name? Why magic! ”

“ Accustomed to personify the forces of nature, to tinge her cold abstractions with the warm hues of imagination, to clothe her naked realities with the gorgeous drapery of a mythic fancy, he fashioned for himself a train of gods and goddesses, of spirits and elves, out of the shifting panorama of the seasons, and followed the annual fluctuations of their fortunes with alternate emotions of cheerfulness and dejection, of gladness and sorrow, which found their natural expression in alternate rites of rejoicing and lamentation, of revelry and mourning. ”

“ Nor do I affect to doubt that the creation of the supreme emotion is a higher form of art than the reflection of the most exquisite sensation, the evocation of the most magical impression. I claim only an equal liberty for the rendering of every mood of that variable and inexplicable and contradictory creature which we call ourselves, of every aspect under which we are gifted or condemned to apprehend the beauty and strangeness and curiosity of the visible world. ”