George Edward Woodberry quotes

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. (George Edward Woodberry)
I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Words are intermediary between thought and things. We express ourselves really not through words, which are only signs, but through what they signify - through things. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
The world is a multiplicity, a harvest-field, a battle-ground; and thence arises through human contact ways of numbering, or mathematics, ways of tillage, or agriculture, ways of fighting, or military tactics and strategy, and these are incorporated in individuals as habits of life. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life? View quote
George Edward Woodberry
"Old times" never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that's better. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
We foresee no limit to scientific advancement in the future, and in scientific truth there is nothing dead; science is always a living and growing body of knowledge; but art on the contrary has many times run its course to an end, and exhausted its vital power. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
A marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
The language of literature is the language of all the world. It is necessary to divest ourselves at once of the notion of diversified vocal and grammatical speech which constitutes the various tongues of the Earth, and conceals the identity of image and logic in the minds of all men. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
If the aristocracy of the whole white race is so to melt in a world of the colored races of the Earth, I for one should only rejoice in such a divine triumph of the sacrificial idea in history; for it would mean the humanization of mankind. (George Edward Woodberry)
One can re-create what was in the mind of a mathematician a thousand years ago, recapture the truth of the intellect wherever it may have once come to light; but the image of art, that infinite variable of perception and expression in the individual, - that is not easily re-created, at least, not with certainty and in its original fulness. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Art does not, like science, set forth a permanent order of nature, the enduring skeleton of law. Two factors primarily determine its works: one is the idea in the mind of the artist, the other is his power of expression; and both these factors are extremely variable. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Seasonal changes, as it were, take place in history, when there is practically an almost universal death, a falling of the foliage of the tree of life. Such were the intervals between the ancient and mediaeval time, the mediaeval and the modern. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Mankind is the grandest and surest artist of all, and history as it clarifies is, in pure fact, an artistic process, a creation in its fullness of the beautiful soul. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Our understanding of Shakespeare already depends largely on the vitality of Renaissance elements in our education. Each man must live in his own generation, as the saying is; but the generations are bound together by the golden links of the great tradition of civilization. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
My first recollection of hearing Wendell Phillips is from my college days, though of course he was always one of my heroes, and I may have heard him before, for we were an anti-slavery family. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
A writer is justly called 'universal' when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
The Greeks, those originators of the intellectual life, fixed for us the idea of the poet. He was a divine man; more sacred than the priest, who was at best an intermediary between men and the gods, but in the poet the god was present and spoke. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power. (George Edward Woodberry)
Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Art has a double visage: it looks before and after. Romance is its forward-looking face. The germ of growth is in romanticism. Formalism, on the other hand, consolidates tradition; gleans what has been gained and makes it facile to the hand or the mind; economizes the energy of genius. View quote
George Edward Woodberry
Genius is that in which the soul of a race bums at its brightest, revealing and preserving its vision; works of art are great and significant in proportion to the clarity and fulness with which they incarnate this vision. View quote
George Edward Woodberry