Art and Literature Quotes

Representatives of society and of art graciously mingled, since it is discovered that it is easier to make art fashionable than to make fashion artistic. ~ The Golden House by Charles Dudley Warner What a blessed thing it is, that Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left! ~ The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? ~ Adam Bede by George Eliot "Mr. Bazzard's father, being a Norfolk farmer, would have furiously laid about him with a flail, a pitch-fork, and every agricultural implement available for assaulting purposes, on the slightest hint of his son's having written a play." ~ The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens But Rosa soon made the discovery that Miss Twinkleton didn't read fairly. She cut the love-scenes, interpolated passages in praise of female celibacy, and was guilty of other glaring pious frauds. ~ The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens "There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts." ~ Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens "You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art." ~ Lothair by Benjamin Disraeli What Art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern: the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men the useful has succeeded to the beautiful. ~ Coningsby by Benjamin Disraeli "To the man who loves art for its own sake," remarked Sherlock Holmes, tossing aside the advertisement sheet of the Daily Telegraph, "it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived." ~ The Adventure of the Copper Beeches by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. ~ The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle