Coolness

“ I cannot too strongly urge, that coolness and confidence on the part of the operator are essential qualifications, for anything approaching to hurry irritates them beyond measure; indeed whilst engaged with them the hand ought never to be hastily removed from one position to another. ”

“ Taste, when drawn into strong sympathy with the beautiful things of nature, cheers the hours of sickness, or decline, and glows even amid the icy atmosphere of death. Combined with a vivid imagination it colors like a passion-tint, the whole of existence, and if surrounding scenes are devoid of its favorite objects, peoples for itself a world of ideal beauty. ”

“ The elegant form, the flexibility of motion, the gentle warmth, the cheeks crimsoned with the roses of delight, the brilliant eyes darting rays of love, or sparkling with the fire of genius, enlivened by the sallies of wit, or animated by the glow of passion, are the inheritance of those only who are in good health, and a moment is sufficient to destroy them. ”

“ Alas! though truth may light bestow, Not always warmth the beams impart, Blest he who gains the boon to know, Nor buys the knowledge with the heart. For warmth and light a blessing both to be, Feel as the enthusiast—as the world-wise see. ”

“ His genius grasped this, that beauty, perfect beauty, is the typifying not of one passion, one phase of human nature, but of the aggregation of all the moods which sway the human mind. There is a great thought in that. It is 'the healthy mind in the healthy body,' as the sculptor feels it. And 'the healthy mind in the healthy body' is one of the great thoughts of the past. ”

“ From what we know of their habits, we cannot suppose more than the mere physical enjoyment of its genial temperature. But how is it with the poet, whom we shall suppose an object in the same scene, stretched on the same bank with the ruminating cattle, and basking in the same light that flickers from the skimming birds. Does he feel nothing more than the genial warmth? ”

“ The tender motives that often moulded his lips, the purity and grace that found expression in his eyes, and that fluctuation of the lines of the face in thought which is almost light and shade, wrought an immortal beauty out of Nature’s poor endowment. ”

“ And the spirit which animates him is essentially the spirit of delight: delight in the beauty of nature and the vividness of sensation, delight in the charm of fable and romance, in the thoughts of friendship and affection, in anticipations of the future, and in the exercise of the art itself which expresses and communicates all these joys. ”

“ To a loving and tender sympathy with nature, which overflows in descriptive passages of great beauty, and to a spirit of gentle revery, developed with genuine delicacy through a thousand light touches, he adds at times an almost rabid exuberance of melodramatic intensity. ”

“ Fashion, Bon ton, and Vertù, are the names of certain idols, to which we sacrifice the genuine pleasures of the soul: in this world of semblance, we are contented with personating happiness; to feel it is an art beyond us. ”

“ The whole volume of Nature lies open to your eye, and furnishes an infinite variety of entertainment. If I was sure that Nature had given you such strong principles of taste and sentiment as would remain with you, and influence your future conduct, with the utmost pleasure would I endeavour to direct your reading in such a way as might form that taste to the utmost perfection of truth and elegance. ”

“ To this purity of aesthetic pleasure must be added its refinement, which implies not merely a certain remoteness from the bodily needs, but the effect of a union of sense and mind in giving amplitude as well as delicacy to our enjoyment of beauty. Marked off from practical activity, As the region of most pure and refined feeling, aesthetic experience is clearly marked off from practical life, with its urgent desires and the rest. In aesthetic contemplation desire and will as a whole are almost dormant. ”

“ Nature had enriched him with many gifts—a strong and active physique, a mind open to any and every simple pleasure and joy that a bountiful Providence could offer, and above all, and greatest of all, a rare appreciation of beauty. ”

“ For Art—and the art we unwittingly practice whenever we take pleasure in nature—is without appeal either to the man who is straining at business and to the man who is dawdling in amusement.
Æsthetic pleasure implies energy during rest and leisureliness during labour. It means making the most of whatever beautiful and noble possibilities may come into our life; nay, it means, in each single soul, being for however brief a time, beautiful and noble because one is filled with beauty and nobility. ”

“ Whatever excites emotion has charms for me, though I insist that the cultivation of the mind by warming, nay, almost creating the imagination, produces taste and an immense variety of sensations and emotions, partaking of the exquisite pleasure inspired by beauty and sublimity. ”

“ No doubt, the perception or imagination of beautiful things, in nature or in art, produces as its natural concomitant, a feeling of sensible pleasure. To hear sweet music, to gaze on the brilliant variety of colours in a gorgeous pageant, to inhale delicious perfumes, to taste savoury dishes—all such experiences gratify the senses. ”

“ We take it, however, to denote that quality, or assemblage and union of qualities in the objects of our perception, whether material, intellectual, or moral, which we contemplate with emotions of pleasure; and we refer it to that internal sense, which is usually called taste. When it is asked, why a thing is beautiful, it is not always easy to find a satisfactory answer. We find beauty in color, in sound, in form, in motion, in everything. We have beauties of speech, beauties of thought, beauties in art, in nature, in the sciences, in actions, in affections, and in characters. ”

“ Since it is the function of emotion to supply heat, and of intellect to furnish light, and since warmth is as a rule more grateful than illumination, particularly if the prospect does not please, we are much more likely to be warmed in our passage through life than illumined. ”

“ His vital powers, his mental faculties, seemed to dilate to the influence of the pure and subtil air, which circulated with a genial softness through his frame, and gave to his whole being a sense of vague but pure felicity, which made even life itself enjoyment. ”

“ Beneath all this gloss of the world—this cold conventional aspect, which all more or less present, and which the business of life renders necessary—there resides for certain a fountain of goodness, pure in its inner depths as the lymph rock-distilled, and ready on every proper occasion to well out in the exercise of the noblest duties. ”

“ Consequently even shapes and passion-like qualities, in so far as they are considered to be suitable or unsuitable to the nature of a thing, belong to habits or dispositions: for shape and color, according to their suitability to the nature of thing, concern beauty; while heat and cold, according to their suitability to the nature of a thing, concern health. And in this way heat and cold are put, by the Philosopher, in the first species of quality. ”

“ The happiest and most fruitful moments for our aesthetic sense, those in which our mind expands most and grows most, hence is most active in aesthetic “action” (though not “activity”) are those in which we are unforcedly and massively absorbed in drinking in, with a quiet intentness, the contrasts and harmonies, the grand unity in variety, the very presence and spirit of an alpine upland, or of a river’s flowing, or of the ocean’s outspread, or of the Parthenon sculptures or of Rafael’s madonnas. ”

“ It is a close ally of both, and, like them, has that all-pervading essence and quality which chastens the feelings, invigorates the mind, and displays the perfection of the soul in the very aspect. Like water from the rill, rain from the cloud, or light from the heavenly bodies, the thought issues pure from within, refreshing, unsullied, and radiant. ”

“ The incidents of a fully developed human personality are superinduced on the mystical and abstract essence of that fiery spirit in the flowing veins of the earth—the aroma of the green world is retained in the fair human body, set forth in all sorts of finer ethical lights and shades—with a wonderful kind of subtlety. ”

“ This scheme of mine was one that suited my proclivities. By nature I am some sentimental, and have always felt gentle toward the mollifying elements of existence. I am disposed to be lenient with the arts and sciences; and I find time to instigate a cordiality for the more human works of nature, such as romance and the atmosphere and grass and poetry and the Seasons. ”

“ Symmetry, elegance and beauty, (--no sublimity or grandeur--) trimness, snugness, privacy, cleanliness, comfort, and convenience--the results of a happy conjunction of art and nature--are all that we can aim at within a limited extent of ground. ”

“ Fulness of the Spirit calms; fulness produced by excitement satiates and exhausts. They who know the world of fashion tell us that the tone adopted there is, either to be, or to affect to be, sated with enjoyment, to be proof against surprise, to have lost all keenness of enjoyment, and to have all keenness of wonder gone. That which ought to be men's shame becomes their boast—unsusceptibility of any fresh emotion. ”

“ Perhaps no where does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. The good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. ”

“ Not in largeness, colour or brilliancy lay their charm, but in deep, langourous, concentrated sweetness,—a sweetness so far-reaching from the orb to the soul that it was easy to sink away into their depths and dream,—and never wish to wake. ”

“ For Beauty must be felt within the “soul.” The senses but convey an impression, the “soul” translates that impression into terms of Ecstacy. For when we come face to face with Beauty, in whatever guise, all that is best and purest in our Nature stirs in response, so that at last our “soul” cannot live without Beauty. ”

“ It was now that I fully realized that soft, soothing, magical effect which one invariably experiences when devoid of all restraint, one is about to partake of a pleasure which one has never experienced before. ”

“ Here is a sensuous paradise, sweet and debilitating, offering varied delights to the eclecticism of personal taste. All angular and harsh things may be dissolved in copious floods of words, and washed into a ravishing, enervating Universe. ”

“ Fancy, awakened by the view of the former, instantly gives shape and features to men we have never seen.—We hear them speak, and see them act; the passions are excited, the mind amused; the houses, the rivers, the fields around supplying the absence of the poet and historian, and restoring with new energy the whole scene to the mind. ”

“ Imagine the most wandering imagination and passionate temperament, the tenderest soul and most artistic nature, dwelling continually in the presence of the most flint-hearted, atrabilious, and frigid man on earth ”

“ In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is excitement of the Heart. I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem.... ”

“ This unexpected encounter between the accident of nature and the necessity of reason awakens in us a sentiment of joyous approval (contentment) which calms the senses, but which animates and occupies the mind, and it results necessarily that we are attracted by a charm towards the sensuous object. It is this attraction which we call kindliness, or love—a sentiment inseparable from grace and beauty. ”

“ Perhaps this is one of the most pleasurable feelings of the human mind, and we now enjoyed it rapturously, surprising our own ears with the awakened flow of eloquence, poured out from fountains which might have been supposed already exhausted; and admiring beauties in all around, the greatest charm of which, though sometimes undiscerned, is the vivid reflection from our own souls. ”

“ But a three-fold, or rather a thousand-fold, pleasure is theirs who to a sense of the poetical unite a sympathy with the spiritual in Art, and who combine with delicacy of perception, and technical knowledge, more elevated sources of pleasure, more variety of association, habits of more excursive thought. ”

“ You still want a thousand of those little attentions that imply a desire of pleasing: you want a 'douceur' of air and expression that engages: you want an elegance and delicacy of expression, necessary to adorn the best sense and most solid matter: in short, you still want a great deal of the 'brillant' and the 'poli'. ”

“ For others the gay, the flippant, the bright—let those from whose temperament these things flow interpret the joyousness and buoyancy and airy grace of existence. For others the empty experimentation in line and color. ”

“ Some stupendous, resplendent work of art might thus affect the senses. Only a keenly receptive temperament, the impressionable, plastic mood, might embrace its insistent meaning, its eloquent message, its redundant appeal to every vibrant, sensitive pulse. ”

“ From the society of such characters, who seem to consider the noble productions of superior intellect, the fine and vigorous flights of fancy, the brilliant effusions of a sublime imagination, and the refined feelings of the heart, as fancied conceits or wild deliriums, those who examine them by a better standard than that of fashion or common taste, fly with delight. ”

“ For it is precisely the exact and delicate response to such subtle visitings, whether it be a visiting of fear and dread or of beauty and delight, which, expressing itself in the individual's manner of living and taste for life, we call personality; which, manifesting itself in his art, we call style; which, exhibiting itself in his purpose and action, we call character. ”

“ A thousand men may enjoy the pleasure derived from a picture, a symphony, or a poem, without lessening the happiness of the most devoted connoisseur. The investigation of nature is an infinite pasture-ground, where all may graze, and where the more bite, the longer the grass grows, the sweeter is its flavour, and the more it nourishes. ”