Arts Quotes - page 20
That noble Lord is of opinion, not only that we ought to exclude Natives from office, but that even by encouraging them to study the arts and learning of Europe, we are preparing the way for the utter destruction of our power in India. I must leave it to the noble Lord to explain what seems to me a rather singular inconsistency in his opinion. I am at a loss to understand how, while utterly contemning education when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with dread when it is given to Natives. This training, we are told, when given to a European, makes him a bookworm, a twaddler, a man unfit for the active duties of life; but give the same education to the Hindoo, and it arms him with such an accession of intellectual power, that an established government, with an army of 250,000 men, backed by the whole army and navy of England, are to go down inevitably before its irresistible power.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
If you were to believe all the old, degenerate German legends, there's a Grail in every castle, a Charlemagne or an Arthur under every mound! There not a noble house without at least one werewolf offspring or a younger son who's made a pact with the Devil, an uncle practising the profane arts of alchemy, a vampirical grandfather, a mad monk, a ruined abbey in the grounds where witches meet, an incarcerated lunatic (or heiress-or both), an infanticide or two (and a patricide), and, of course, a family ghost.
Michael Moorcock
Here information and philosophies were exchanged, together with all manner of goods. This was a court whose energies were not devoted to maintaining itself unchanged for eternity, but to every kind of new idea and lively, humane discussion, which welcomed fresh thought not as a threat to its existence but as a very necessity to its continued well-being, whose wealth was devoted to experiment in the arts and sciences, to supporting those who were needy, to aiding thinkers and scholars. The Bright Empire's brightness would come no longer from the glow of putrefaction but from the light of reason and good will.
Michael Moorcock
My object in supporting this Motion is, that I may bring to bear upon the legislation of this House those virtues and that talent which have characterised the middle and industrious classes of this country. If you talk of your aristocracy and your traditions, and compel me to talk of the middle and industrious classes, I say it is to them that the glory of this country is owing. You have had your government of aristocracy and tradition; and the worst thing in this country has been its government for the last century and a half. All that has been done to elevate the country has been the work of the middle and industrious classes. Whether in literature, in arts, in science, in commerce, or in enterprise-all has been done by the middle and industrious classes; and it is because I wish to bring their virtue, intelligence, industry, and frugality, to bear upon the proceedings of this House, that I support the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose.
Richard Cobden
Youth is learning to read (which is all that one learns in school), and is learning where and how to find what he may later need to know (which is the best of the arts that he acquires in college). Nothing learned from a book is worth anything until it is used and verified in life; only then does it begin to affect behavior and desire. It is Life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.
Will Durant
.. that famous idea of 'beauty', which is, as everybody says, the goal of the arts. If it is their only goal, what becomes of the men like Rubens, Rembrandt, and all the northern natures generally, who prefer other qualities? Demand purity, In a word beauty... In general the men of the north tend less in that direction. The Italian prefers ornament.
Eugène Delacroix
For a man who is sensitive to nature, happiness consists in expressing nature. How infinitely happy, then, is the man who reflects nature like a mirror without being aware of it, who does the thing for love of it and not from any pretensions to take first place. This noble unself-consciousness is what we find in all truly great men, in the founders of the arts. I picture the great Poussin, in his retreat, delighting in the study of the human heart.... I picture Raphael in the arms of his mistress, turning from La Fornarina to paint his Saint Cecilia.... I am only too well aware that I am far not only from their divine spirit, but even from their modest simplicity...
Eugène Delacroix
As geological time goes, it is but a moment since the human race began and only the twinkling of an eye since the arts of civilization were first invented. In spite of some alarmists, it is hardly likely that our species will completely exterminate itself. And so long as man continues to exist, we may be pretty sure that, whatever he may suffer for a time, and whatever brightness may be eclipsed, he will emerge sooner or later, perhaps strengthened and reinvigorated by a period of mental sleep. The universe is vast and men are but tiny specks on an insignificant planet. But the more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.
Bertrand Russell
A mere savage, ignorant and brutal, and the creature of appetite alone, can never rise from his degradation, until he has learned to draw from the mineral kingdom the instruments of arts and civilization, or, at least, to use the aids that are thus obtained. The axe, the hoe, the plough, the loom, are inseparable means and companions of his advancement.
Gideon Mantell
The art most significantly affected by radio was music, since it was abolished the acoustic or mechanical limitations on the range of sounds. Music, the last of the arts to break out of the bodily prison that confines oral communication, had already entered the era of mechanical production before 1914 with the gramophone, although this was hardly yet within reach of the masses.
Eric Hobsbawm
