At Queen Philippa's court his fastidious eyes were spared the sight, which was moving Langland to realism, of the disbanded soldiery begging their bread along the countryside. Most of his busy days were spent with princes and potentates, and it is idle to ask how far this experience suits the impartial muse of history...He possessed, too, a prodigious memory; and his keen eye for detail and the wealth and colour of his narrative produced such a record of the fourteenth century as Langland could never have composed. Posterity can but return thanks that the picture has been drawn from both aspects.
Jean FroissartRelated topics
ask begging bread busy century colour countryside court detail draw experience eye far fourteenth history idle keen memory moving muse narrative picture posterity queen realism record return sight soldiery spend thanks wealth days eyesRelated quotes
The national passion for secular music admitted of little or no abatement by the disgrace and dispersion of the minstrels. Professional musicians, both vocal and instrumental, were afterwards retained at the court, and also in the mansions of the nobility. In the sixteenth century, a knowledge of music was considered as a genteel accomplishment for persons of high rank. Henry VIII not only sang well, but played upon several sorts of instruments; he also wrote songs, and composed the tunes for them; and his example was followed by several of the nobility, his favourites.
Joseph Strutt
As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour. The great musicians knew this. w:Beethoven and the rest wrote music - simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in that... Art should be independent of all claptrap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.
James McNeill Whistler
If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.
John Stuart Mill
Over verdant lowlands cut by the deep streamwaters of the south hangs a peculiar gloom. Every eye is stifled by the clouds that block the sight of the sun, every voice is muffled like the chirps of fleeing birds, every quasi-movement sluggish. Children must not laugh, no attention must be drawn to the fact that a man exists, one must not provoke the powers with frivolity-do nothing but prowl along, furtively, lowly. Maybe the Godhead had not yet struck its final blow, an unexpiated sin might still fester somewhere, perhaps there still lurked worms that needed to be crushed.
Halldór Laxness
Do you consider, my dear maggotty sir [cosy-name for his friend], what a deal of work history pictures require to what little dirty subjects of coal horses and jackasses and such figures as I fill up with; no, you don't consider anything about that part of the story... But to be serious (as I know you love to be), do you really think that a regular composition in the Landskip [landscape] way should ever be filled with History, or any figures but such as fill a place (I won't say stop a gap) or create a little business for the eye to be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee.
Thomas Gainsborough
