Interior

“ But the interior of itself would never have won me, as I had not expected to be won by any building made by man; and from the inside I would pass out only to find a fresh charm in that part where Nature had come more to man's aid. ”

“ In the first place then, Exterior is the same content as Interior. What is inwardly is also found outwardly, and vice versâ. The appearance shows nothing that is not in the essence, and in the essence there is nothing but what is manifested. ”

“ The occasionally accommodating art-lover may accept it philosophically, I think; for the interior, though admirably effective as a whole, has no great sublimity, nor even purity, of pitch. It is splendidly vast and dim ”

“ All perfection also increases toward the interiors and decreases toward the exteriors; because interior things are nearer the Divine, and in themselves purer; but exterior things are more remote from the Divine, and in themselves grosser. ”

“ THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL WE'RE taking up the House Beautiful — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — for we've decided that Environment has more effect on personality than Heredity.
Interior decoration is the greatest of the arts — don't you think? — because it furnishes the proper setting for the spirit. ”

“ Certain interior experiences, certain deep-seated spiritual pleasures and pains, weaknesses and powers, helps and hindrances, are increasingly known and felt in and through interior and exterior action, and interior suffering, effort, and growth. ”

“ Form, which from the outside gradually approaches him, in his dwelling, his furniture, his clothing, begins at last to take possession of the man himself, to transform him, at first exteriorly, and afterwards in the interior. ”

“ There is a spectacle grander than the sea, and that is the sky; there is a spectacle grander than the sky, and it is the interior of the soul. ”

“ Is it to be a formal reception-room, or a living-room? Is it to be a family library, or a man's study? If it is a small flat, do you aim at absolute comfort, artistically achieved, or do you aim at formality at the expense of comfort? ”

“ As a triumph of the many-hued it prepares you for the interior, where the same parti- coloured splendour is endlessly at play--a confident complication of harmonies and contrasts and of the minor structural refinements and braveries. ”

“ HE second state of man after death is called the state of his interiors, because he is then let into the interiors which belong to his mind, or to his will and thought: and his exteriors, in which he had been in his first state, are laid asleep. Every one who observes the life of man, and his speech and actions, may know that with every one there are things exterior and interior, or exterior and interior thoughts and intentions. ”

“ And the more exterior are these corporeal forms and objects in themselves, the less do they profit the interior and spiritual nature, because of the great distance and the lack of proportion existing between the corporeal and the spiritual. ”

“ They are works, in short, of the greatest range and variety of interior construction which, without serving as the habitation of a god, or a communion of worshippers, independently by this self-consistent operation appeal to the wonder of our imaginations quite as much in the colossal size of their proportions and masses, as through the fact that their isolated forms and images make an independent and exclusive claim to our interest. ”

“ But the interior life of the soul is, after all, a very much less interesting study to an ordinarily healthy person than the exterior. It is surprising how little our recent novelists have taken this into consideration. ”

“ The aspect or relation to the sunlight, whether it be a north window or exposed to full sunshine; the architecture of the building, the shape and position of the window, the color of the walls, the style of the interior decorations—all have to be considered. ”

“ O that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves. ”

“ I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice.
I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men are provided for, and that the deaths of young women and the deaths of little children are provided for. ”

“ Elegance, distinguished simplicity in shapes, done in glass of a single colour, or in one colour with a simple edge in a contrasting shade, or in one colour with a whole nosegay of colours to set it off, appearing literally as flowers or fruit to surmount the stopper of a bottle, the top of a jar, or as decorations on candlesticks. ”

“ Have you him not before you in his humble home, secluded and forgotten of men, yet inhabiting a dream-world of crowded images? What beautiful stories—what touching little episodes of domestic life—lie in the quiet scenes of those quaint interiors ”

“ From all this it follows that the interiors of the mind act as a one with the interiors of the body, and the exteriors of the mind with the exteriors of the body. The interiors of the mind, likewise the interiors of the body, will be considered further on, when degrees of life have been treated of. ”

“ When they come to their own society, their interiors are opened; and because these are conformable to the interiors of the angels who are in that society, therefore they are immediately acknowledged and received with joy. ”

“ It appears differently to different classes or societies of spirits, and external objects come and go, appear and disappear, are created or annihilated in correspondence with the spiritual panorama which is passing in the interiors of the souls of those who live there. ”

“ We have in the meanwhile to regret that no beneficial consequences will immediately follow them. The further knowledge that has been gained of the interior is but as a gleam of sunshine over an extensive landscape. A stronger light has fallen upon the nearer ground, but the distant horizon is still enveloped in clouds. The veil has only as it were been withdrawn from the marshes of the Macquarie to be spread over the channel of the Darling. ”

“ Ceaseless fiery arrows dart in and out amongst the flying thunder-clouds; the vaporous mass soon glows with incandescent heat; hailstones rattle fiercely down, and as they dash upon our iron tools they too emit gleams and flashes of lurid light. The heaving waves resemble fiery volcanic hills, each belching forth its own interior flames, and every crest is plumed with dancing fire. My eyes fail under the dazzling light, my ears are stunned with the incessant crash of thunder. I must be bound to the mast, which bows like a reed before the mighty strength of the storm. ”

“ The Grand Teton National Park is located in the interior of a vast mountain region, and its avenues of approach are, of necessity, through canyons and passes. These approaches are themselves of great interest and beauty, and afford magnificent distant views of the Teton Range. The country traversed is rich in associations of the Old West and contains numerous historic shrines which deserve the attention of the passing traveler. ”

“ These are lighted before sunset, and against the blaze of the western light are for some time completely invisible; but as twilight thickens, and the shadows deepen, and a gray pearly veil is drawn over the sky, the distant basilica begins to glow against it with a dull furnace-glow, as of a wondrous coal fanned by a constant wind; looking not so much lighted from without as reddening from an interior fire. Slowly this splendor grows, until the mighty building at last stands outlined against the dying twilight as if etched there with a fiery burin. ”

“ If, on the contrary, the living-room is in a cool house on the ocean, or a shaded mountainside, and the sun is cut off by broad porches, you will cheer up your room, and immensely improve it, by using sun-producing colours in chintzes and silks; while cut flowers or growing plants, which reproduce the same colouring, will intensify the illusion of sunshine. ”

“ Here the architects of the middle ages might have found studies for every form of the sacred art which sprang from the development of the pointed arch. A mile farther we had to bow our heads under corniced elliptic arches in the romanesque style ”

“ Such a disposition of these securities will relieve the Secretary of the Interior of a disagreeable responsibility and duty not in any way homogeneous to the general duties of the office, and place the bonds where all such valuables should be kept.
The co-operation of the religious bodies having in charge the duty of nominating Indian agents has been harmonious and satisfactory, and they have evidently been careful in their selection of proper men for those positions. ”

“ If your house is in a part of the country where the heat is great, a dark living-room in summer is sometimes a distinct advantage, so keep the colourings subdued in tone, and, therefore, cool looking. ”

“ In the light of these disclosures we see that all the splendid habitations and magnificent palaces of heaven are but pictorial representations, under the great law of correspondence, of the ruling loves of the angels. They are the exact images of their dominant affections, reflecting with mathematical precision their inner life and character. It is each one's ruling love that fashions and adorns his house in the other world, the inner chambers and closets of which, with all their furniture, are but the correspondential images of his secret motives and hidden purposes. ”

“ I go down to the foundations of real life, and show how the emotions which find their expression in literature arise in the human heart. And this same human heart is no still pool, no idyllic mountain lake. It is an ocean, with submarine vegetation and terrible inhabitants. Drawing-room history of literature, like drawing-room poetry, sees in human life a drawing-room, a decorated ball-room—the furniture and the people alike polished, the brilliant illumination excluding all possibility of dark corners. ”

“ Outward nature, inner life and passion, town and country, all the features of human nature, as exhibited in every grade of life—from the cottage to the throne—are in him expressed with a truth and a natural strength, that awake in us precisely the same sensations as nature itself. ”

“ I woke this morning out of dreams into what we call Reality, into the daylight, the furniture of my familiar bedroom—in fact into the well-known, often-discussed, but, to my mind, as yet unexplained Universe. ”

“ Often the relationship hangs on similarity in period, style of painting or colour scheme. Your expert will see decorative value in a painting which has no individual beauty nor intrinsic worth when taken out of a particular setting. ”

“ And, besides, we were beginning to get accustomed to this troglodyte [1] life. I no longer thought of sun, moon, and stars, trees, houses, and towns, nor of any of those terrestrial superfluities which are necessaries of men who live upon the earth's surface. ”

“ If the weather drives him home, he sits in a room lighted only by glowing embers; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star, to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation, by contemplating the magnificent or pathetic scenes of tragick and epick poetry. ”

“ It is nature who, in the structure of the leaf or in the avenue of the lofty limes, teaches the architect how to adorn his designs with the most graceful of embellishments, to rear the lofty column or display the lengthening vista of the cathedral aisle. It is nature who is teaching us all to be tender, loving, and true, and to love and worship God, and to admire all His works. Let us then in our criticism refer everything first of all to nature. Is the work natural? Does it follow nature? Secondly, does it follow the rules of art? ”

“ CHEERLESSNESS OF A WANT OF SPIRITUALITY. Imagine yourselves in a vast hall, from which all rays of sunlight or warmth are excluded. Imagine this apartment lined with gorgeous pictures of material life that are remarkable only for their excess of brilliant color, and the magnitude and variety of the forms they represent; each nook and recess filled with statues of men, women, and animals,—white, cold, stiff, stern, and lifeless in appearance; the entire building cheerless and chilly, with no appearance of life, activity, or warmth. ”

“ From scenery the most sublime, through the several gradations of magnificence and grandeur, down to the simply picturesque and beautiful, in all variety and shade; in compass vast, or in area limited, we have an endless variety, and, with a pouring out of God's harmonies in the creation, without a parallel, inviting every intelligent mind to study their features and character, in adapting them to his own uses, and, in so doing, to even embellish—if such a thing be possible—such exquisite objects with his own most ingenious handiwork. ”

“ He had wondered then that Nature could so paint the two sides of this thinnest of all canvases: the outside merely daubed over that it might resemble the dead and common and worthless things amid which the creature had to live—a masterwork of concealment; the inside designed and drawn and coloured with lavish fullness of plan, grace of curve, marvel of hue—all for the purpose of the exquisite self revelation which should come when the one great invitation of existence was sought or was given. ”

“ Notwithstanding the universal brightness of the scene, the uniformity of colour thrown on every object, would most certainly prevent us from distinguishing a church from a palace, a cottage from a knoll or a heap of rubbish, a splendid mansion from rugged rocks, the trees from the hills on which they grow, or a barren desert from rich and fertile plains. In such a case, human beings would be confounded, and even friends and neighbours be at a loss to recognize one another. ”

“ Our susceptibilities, the discovery of our powers, manifold experiences—our various experiences of the coming and going of bodily pain, for instance—belong to this or the other well-remembered place in the material habitation—that little white room with the window across which the heavy blossoms could beat so peevishly in the wind, with just that particular catch or throb, such a sense of teasing in it, on gusty mornings; and the early habitation thus gradually becomes a sort of material shrine or sanctuary of sentiment ”