"Esthetic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of scalloped blue tissue-paper—ostensibly to allure flies, but hanging there winter and summer, year in and year out. Between the windows that looked out on the river stood a piano, draped with a festooning scarf of bandanna handkerchiefs. These things seemed to Blair, at this stage of his esthetic development, very satisfying, and part of his pleasure in "treating" came from his surroundings; he used to look about him enviously, thinking of the terrible dining-room at home; and on sunny days he used to look, with even keener pleasure, at the reflected ripple ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... to take care of itself. Nearly always when an artist has been over-anxious to charge his work with a moral message, written so plain that all who run may read, he has failed to attain either of his ends, the ethical or the esthetic. There is a purpose plainly exprest in Miss Edgeworth's 'Moral Tales' and in her 'Parent's Assistant'; and the result is that healthy girls and wholesome boys are revolted. There was no moral intent ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... the Pharaohs, and set the fashion of statues hewn out of black basalt in the Egyptian style.[36] The amateurs of that period affected to prefer the hieratic rigidity of the barbarian idols to the elegant freedom of Alexandrian art. Those esthetic manifestations probably corresponded to religious prejudices, and the Latin worship always endeavored to imitate the art of temples in the Nile valley more closely than did the Greek. This evolution was in conformity with all the tendencies of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... of the opinions, ideas, and habits of life inherited by each generation from its forbears. It is, indeed, a people's whole state of civilization with its political, economic, intellectual, scientific, religious, and esthetic aspects. ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... Esthetic arts, such as painting and architecture, are unknown, though Manbos can carve rude and often fantastic wooden images, and can make crude tracings and incisions on ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... the principles of arrangement, with brief comment on the periods of design which have most influenced printing. Treats of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm; motion; symmetry and variety; ornament, esthetic and symbolic. 37 illustrations; ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... the case with practical expressions. Both for the artist and the appreciator, they are ends in themselves. Compare, for example, a love poem with a declaration of love.[Footnote: Contrast Croce's use of the same illustration: Esthetic, p. 22, English translation.] The poem is esteemed for the rhythmic emotional experience it gives the writer or reader; the declaration, even when enjoyed by the suitor, has its prime value in its consequences, and the quicker it is ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... foraging cap, leaning forward to rest himself on his gun. His long skirted coat is buckled tightly about his waist to form a neat bustle effect in the back, and the solidity of his granite shoes and the fell rigidity of his granite breeches are such as make the esthetic shudder; one has to admit that as a work of art he is almost as bad as the statues cluttering New York City. But in Appleboro folks are not critical; they see him not with the eyes of art but with the deeper vision of the heart. He stands for something that is ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... report, The Potomac, was lately published. It makes a detailed, wise, and instructive plea for considering the river and its landscape as a whole and meaningful thing, for proceeding with their development and protection according to high esthetic and ecological principles, and for a distinctive ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Schoolmaster lacked much in grace of form, but it revealed unguessed resources in the German language, it showed democratic sympathies more genuine than Rousseau's, it gave the promise of a new pedagogy and a fruitful esthetic; above all it bore the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... had her first deep draught of esthetic delight in interior decoration. She loved this quiet dignity, this large simplicity—nothing that obtruded, nothing that jarred, everything on the same scale of dark coloring and large size. She admired the way the mirror, without pretense of being anything but a mirror, enhanced the spaciousness ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... and scenes of the piece—one of those singularly witless compositions which have at the least the merit of giving entire relief to an audience engaged in mental action or business excitements and cares during the day, as it makes not the slightest call on either the moral, emotional, esthetic or spiritual nature—a piece in which among other characters, so called, a Yankee—certainly such a one as was never seen, or at least like it ever seen in North America, is introduced in England, with a varied fol-de-rol of talk, plot, scenery, and such phantasmagoria as goes to make ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... examination we find in nearly every case that they are either not at all or only indirectly (not esthetically), connected with the relations of the sexes; and that neither does personal beauty exist as a rule among savages, nor have they the esthetic sense to appreciate its exceptional occurrence. They nearly always paint, tattoo, decorate, or mutilate themselves without the least reference to courtship or the desire to please the other sex. It is the easiest thing in the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the story as it had been first conceived nor so glaringly. "I saw," writes our poet, "at first only the psychological interest in this material. The problem was to present the story as well as possible and this was indeed a significant one for the narrator. A distinctly esthetic interest would not be possible ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... /adj./ (alt. 'barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/) Said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... especially of solid gold, ravished from Fifth Avenue shops, took their place on the crude table he had fashioned with his ax. Not for esthetic effect did they now value gold, but merely because that metal had perfectly withstood the ravages ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... yourself, aren't you?" he asked. "Going into the sick-room with your little hands full of flowers?" But even as he scoffed he was unwrapping his own flowers. Bangs was right. The act of handing a pasteboard box to a sick friend lacked esthetic value. ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... symphonic school, no profound culture, no traditions, no masters, no public: the whole reduced to poor Berlioz, who died of suffocation and weariness. And now Christophe felt a great respect for those who had been the laborers in the national revival: he had no desire now to jeer at their esthetic narrowness or their lack of genius. They had created something much greater than music: a musical people. Among all the great toilers who had forged the new French music one man was especially dear to him: Cesar Franck, who died without seeing the victory for which he had paved ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... observer, there was nothing awful about the fireplace. Everything in the way of bric-a-brac possessed by the Santa Maria flatters was artistic. It may have been in the Lease that only people with esthetic tastes were to be admitted to the apartments. However that may be, the fireplace, with its vases and pictures and trinkets, was something quite wonderful. Indian incense burned in a mysterious little dish, pictures of purple ladies were ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... seen his wife entirely nude. Such concealment of the external reproductive organs, by married people, appears to be common. Judging from my own inquiry, very few women care to look upon male nakedness, and many women, though not wanting in esthetic feeling, find no beauty in man's form. Some are positively repelled by the sight of nakedness, even that of a husband or lover. On the contrary, most men delight in gazing upon the uncovered figure of women. It ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... statuette six inches high. Anything shallower than a half-inch bas-relief is a blank to her, so far as it expresses an idea of beauty. Large statues, of which she can feel the sweep of line with her whole hand, she knows in their higher esthetic value. She suggests herself that she can know them better than we do, because she can get the true dimensions and appreciate more immediately the solid nature of a sculptured figure. When she was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston she stood on a step-ladder and let both hands play over ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... can make its own modes. Absolute cleanliness, cleanliness as exacting as that proper nurses prescribe for babies, is the first and most important factor in making old age attractive. Rich dress, in artistic colors, soft, misty, esthetic, comes next; then the idealizing scarfs, collars, jabots, and fichus of lace and tulles. Old people becomingly and artistically attired have the charm of rare old pictures. If they have soul-illumined ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... first year's residence in Concord, I had driven up with some friends to an esthetic tea at Mr. Emerson's. It was in the winter, and a great wood-fire blazed upon the hospitable hearth. There were various men and women of note assembled, and I, who listened attentively to all the fine things that were said, was for some time ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... boulder caliber catalog center check criticize develop development dulness endorse envelop esthetic gaiety gild gipsy glamor goodby gray inquire medieval meter mold mustache odor program ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... long as it is labeled butter we try to bring our sensations into line with our imaginations. For the real butter flavor there is no more a substitute than there is for the aroma of coffee. But these are matters of esthetic pleasure rather than of nutrition. They depend largely upon habit. Whale blubber and seal oil are as much appreciated in some quarters as butter is by us. An American going inland from the Atlantic coast is often surprised ...
— Everyday Foods in War Time • Mary Swartz Rose
... antithetical, as a general rule, to the discretion that stations and their editorial staff must exercise to fulfill their journalistic purpose and statutory obligations."); Finley, 524 U.S. at 586 ("The NEA's mandate is to make esthetic judgments, and the inherently content-based 'excellence' threshold for NEA support sets it apart from the subsidy at issue in Rosenberger which was available to all student organizations that were 'related to the educational purpose ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... to consider what a real advance in esthetic taste that one little fact stands for. All M'booley's attendants were the giddiest and gaudiest savages we had yet seen, with more colobus fur, sleighbells, polished metal, ostrich plumes, and red paint ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... with large masses of men and women. The director of community singing must therefore, first of all, be a good mob leader. But if, having met the people upon their own level, he can now call upon his artistic instincts and his musical training, and by means of a purely esthetic appeal raise his crowd a degree or two higher in their appreciation of music as a fine art, eventually perhaps finding it possible to interest them in a higher type of music than is represented by the songs sung in this friendly and informal way, then he has indeed performed his task with ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... attack on society has lacked simplicity. The poor do not share their tastes nor understand their art-criticisms. They do not want the simple life, nor the esthetic life; on the contrary, they want very much to wallow in all the costly vulgarities from which the elect souls among the rich turn away with loathing. It is by surfeit and not by abstinence that they will be cured of their hankering after unwholesome sweets. What they do dislike and despise ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... had never witness'd before. Then its continuance: a full hour pass'd before the last of those earth-ends disappear'd. The sky behind was all spread in translucent blue, with many little white clouds and edges. To these a sunset, filling, dominating the esthetic and soul senses, sumptuously, tenderly, full. I end this note by the pond, just light enough to see, through the evening shadows, the western reflections in its water-mirror surface, with inverted figures of trees. I hear now ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... a stoppage; and therefore it is that Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Williamsburg are, at any rate in appearance, very dull and uninviting. They are, however, very populous. Many of the quieter citizens prefer to live there; and I am told that the Brooklyn tea parties consider themselves to be, in esthetic feeling, very much ahead of anything of the kind in the more opulent centers of the city. In beauty of scenery Staten Island is very much the prettiest of the suburbs of New York. The view from the hillside in Staten Island down upon New York harbor is very lovely. It is the only really good view ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... which responds to a special sense, peculiar to the human race. This is ordinarily called the esthetic sense, but that is an inexact term, for esthetic sense signifies a sense of the beautiful and what is esthetic is not necessarily beautiful. Sense ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... what she has done and is now doing for you, has a right to expect unselfishness and unstinted service in her own interests and in those of mankind. Shall she get it? Will you rise to the occasion and, even at a sacrifice of personal comfort, ease, esthetic enjoyment, money, give to her what is her due? Will you remember Noblesse Oblige? Of course you will. For there is a well-established principle, clearly stated in Holy Writ and sanctioned by the ages, that of those to whom much hath been ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... went to town to work in a steam laundry. She came home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head was completely turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time she came home on her first visit she began to treat Canute with contempt. She ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... secure them in swarms. Bright, beautiful colors, sweet fragrance, luscious nectar, with which the highly specialized bees, butterflies, and moths are wooed, would all be lost on them, lacking as they do esthetic taste. For flies, a snug shelter from cold spring winds such as Jack-in-the-pulpit, the marsh calla, the pitcher-plant, or the skunk cabbage offers; sometimes a fetid odor like the latter's, or dull purplish red or brownish color resembling stale meat, which ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... of Gustave, purchased an interest in the Stoddart Comedy Company for a hundred-dollar bill. This bill was given to Charles as a "prop." In those days the financial integrity of the legitimate theatrical combination was sometimes questioned by hard-hearted hotel-keepers. The less esthetic "variety" troupes, minstrel shows, and circuses enjoyed a much higher credit. An advance-agent like Charles sometimes found difficulty in persuading the hotel people to accept orders on ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... quaint colloquial forms all delighted Howells—more, in fact, than the opulent sealskin overcoat which he affected at this period—a garment astonishing rather than esthetic, as Mark Twain's clothes in those days of his first regeneration were likely to be startling enough, we may believe; in the conservative atmosphere of the Atlantic rooms. And Howells—gentle, genial, sincere—filled with the early happiness of his calling, won the heart of Mark Twain ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... world or of human nature. He felt, too, that a knowledge of these laws, could it once become second nature, would be very helpful to him as a dramatic poet. Whether he was right in so thinking is a question too large to be discussed here, nor can we follow him in the details of his esthetic speculation. The subject is too abstruse to be dispatched in a few words. Suffice it to say that a number of minor papers, the most important being On Winsomeness and Dignity (Ueber Anmut and Wuerde) and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... lacking which most poetry seems old-fashioned to the fastidious palate of modern men. Unamuno is too genuine a representative of the spiritual and masculine variety of Spanish genius, ever impervious to French, and generally, to intellectual, influences, to be affected by the esthetic excellence of this art. Yet, for all his disregard of the modern resources which it adds to the poetic craft, Unamuno loses none of his modernity. He is indeed more than modern. When, as he often does, he strikes the true poetic note, he is outside time. His appeal is not in complexity but in ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... neurosis, the Honourable Dave firmly believed that he understood the trouble from which his client was suffering. He had seen many cases of it in ladies from the Atlantic coast: the first had surprised him, no doubt. Salomon City, though it contained the great Boon, was not esthetic. Being a keen student of human nature, he rightly supposed that she would not care to join the colony, but he thought it his duty to mention that there ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... handbook of the principles of arrangement, with brief comment on the periods of design which have most influenced printing. Treats of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm; motion; symmetry and variety; ornament, esthetic and symbolic. 37illustrations; ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton |
