"Still life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... various, and must be amused; but for us, we respectfully withdraw. We have had enough of the intense; we now welcome the trifling, appropriating however as much of the serious as we care to admit in our still life. When the Sabbath comes round, there are seven bells that reach us, each with its separate voice; and these, with falling waters, and the morning incense going up from the hill-sides, are as much of 'mass' as we care to have in our worship. But we have a ready ear ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... James II, and his Queen; which pieces are also highly applauded by Mr. Dryden. She drew several history pieces, also some portraits for her diversion, exceeding well, and likewise some pieces of still life. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... risk in hazarding the opinion that Keyse took more pride in the picture-gallery of his own paintings than in any other feature of his establishment. The canvases included representations of all kinds of still life, and, thanks to the recording pen of J. T. Smith, that enthusiastic lover of old London, it is still possible to make the round of the gallery in the company of the artist-proprietor. Mr. Smith visited the gardens when public patronage ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... doves know not, till put to it, what they can bear; especially when engaged in love affairs; and their attention wholly engrossed. But the sex love busy scenes. Still life is their aversion. A woman will create a storm, rather than be without one. So that they can preside in the whirlwind, and direct it, they are happy.—But my beloved's misfortune is, that she must live in tumult; yet neither raise them herself, nor ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... nervousness of the diocesan clergy, who would one after another look at that steel engraving of Jesus Christ preaching by the Sea of Galilee, and who when they had finished looking at that would look at those two oil paintings of still life, those rich and sombre accumulations of fish, fruit and game, that glowed upon the walls with a kind of sinister luxury. Waiting rooms are all much alike, the doctor's, the dentist's, the bishop's, the railway-station's; ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... 'Mfuni thy spear. And, hark ye, 'Mfuni, if thou canst slay the white man, or even disable him, thou shalt choose twenty head of cattle from mine own herd, and they shall be thine. But if the white man proves to be the victor in the fight, and there is still life in thee when it is over, I swear, by the bones of my royal father, that thou shalt be given ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... came upon the Dahar-es-Salahh, a mountain whence the prospect of all Philistia and the coast from almost Gaza to Carmel expands like a map—no, rather like a thing of still life before the eye, with the two seas, namely, the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, visible at once, with likewise the mountains of Samaria and Gerizim, besides the Moab country eastward, and Jerusalem and Bethlehem ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... we could while there was still life left in the herd, but the cattle were too far gone for droving. We managed to collect a hundred or so—sent them in trucks from Crocodile Creek Terminus, for boiling down and netted about thirty ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... expression, but he gives them with perfect truth and accuracy. This is, in fact, what distinguishes his compositions from all others of the same kind, that they are equally remote from caricature, and from mere still life.... His faces go to the very verge of caricature, and yet never (we believe in any single ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... book on painting, in which we are told that the first attempts of Velasquez were studies in still life, or simple compositions of actual figures, called bodegones in Spanish, of which we have a fair example at the National Gallery in the Christ at the House of Martha. Sir Frederick Cook, at Richmond, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... is quite incomprehensible. The great political revolution of the nineties could never have been a product of the rigid Pigtail age, but it could very well have been a result of the Rococo in the Pigtail. In the Rococo there was still life, mad, ungovernable life; the Pigtail always had a Hippocratic face. The virtuosos of personality, the strange Rococo original types, were the forbears of the literary Storm and Stress writers, the artistic reformers, the big and little demagogues. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... conversation the still life of the beautiful cottage was enlivened. A lovely boy played before the door, while a pale mother watched him from within. That pale mother was not yet thirty years of age, yet her cheeks were sunken, her eyes dim, and her hair streaked with silver. Truly, the face was breaking fast, but the ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... in and about the vessel was absolutely and finally in order. As he walked among the perfumed tangles of shrub and flower in his garden, and out towards the sea-shore he was impressed by the great silence everywhere around him. Everything looked like a moveless picture—a study in still life. Passing through a little olive wood which lay between his own grounds and the sea, he paused as he came out of the shadow of the trees and looked towards the height crowned by the Palazzo d'Oro, where from the upper windows twinkled a few lights ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... on whose dreamy calm the accident had made no impression whatever, had successfully established the equilibrium of the glass and the fork, and was now cautiously inserting beneath the latter a section of a roll, the whole forming a charming picture in still life. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... a time. Charles Fraser (1782-1860), born in Charleston, South Carolina, of Scottish ancestry, first studied law and retired with a competency. He then took up art and achieved eminent success in miniature painting and as a painter of landscapes, pictures of genre, still life, etc. William Dunlap (1766-1839), artist and dramatist, founder and early Vice-President of the National Academy of Design, was of Ulster Scot descent. His family name was originally Dunlop. Robert Walter Weir (1803-89), of Scots parentage, is best known for his historical pictures, ...
— Scotland's Mark on America • George Fraser Black
... men cry out. But no; I see his hair far down, close under the stern of the boat I plunge in, and diving, grasp it and bring him to the surface. The boat has forged ahead. With difficulty I get him alongside, and we are hauled on board. The young man has still life in him, but cannot speak. We pull back to the ship, more than once narrowly escaping being swamped. It is some time before the stranger can speak. Even then he does not seem willing to say much. He does not mention the name of the brig ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... my final answer. I will not let the tiny mouthful of hay I have here go while there is still life in my body, even though you mean to insure payment, and even though you actually do guarantee payment. After all, who among you will be in a position to guarantee payment if all the flocks die? The cold weather ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... intimate silence—whence the expression sub rosa, 'under the rose.' And therefore Harpocrates, the god of silence and mystery (or of the secret productive force of Nature), bears this flower—the first emblem of 'still life'—silence as to the joys ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... terrible object to look upon, and one that added a new and singular interest to the scene! The world seemed then to be composed almost exclusively of still life, and the body was no impediment to the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... effects of those sure and infallible principles of light and colour which Rubens had so successfully disseminated in the Netherlands, were soon found in every department of art. Landscapes, portraits, drolls, and even the dullest and most uninteresting objects of still life, possess irresistible charms and fascination from the magic of those principles. Rembrandt, who, it is said, was never at Venice, might, notwithstanding, have seen, without going out of his country, many pictures of the Venetian ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... were few lights to be seen in the streets or in the houses. Here and there strolled the white-uniformed police guards; occasionally soldiers hurried barracksward; now and then belated citizens moved through the dense shadows on the sidewalks, but the Americans saw still life in its reality. Returning from their stroll beside the castle-walls, far to the west of where they had entered the grounds that afternoon, they paused in the middle of Castle Avenue, near the main gate, and looked down the dark, deserted ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... solitary, and would have been silent, but for the continued plashing of the fountain; and the whole scene still maintained the monastic illusion which the fancy of Waverley had conjured up.—And here we beg permission to close a chapter of still life. [There is no particular mansion described under the name of Tully-Veolan; but the peculiarities of the description occur in various old Scottish seats. The House of Warrender upon Bruntsfield Links, and that ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... or Pekin, it still must be the human being that lends the interest to the still life around it. A truce, therefore, to picturesque description—sour grapes to the present pen—of church and fort and river, with which the living persons of whom we tell have little ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... if grandly arranged, as may be well seen in an etching of Rembrandt's of a spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so I have seen frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most commonplace still life, by our own Hunt, where the petty glosses and delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused color; so also in pieces of the same kind by Etty, where, however, though the richness and play of color are greater, and the arrangement grander, there is ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the farthest was too distant to raise his spirits by its contemplation: it was a high, wearisome abode. As soon as he had completed this examination, and found there was nothing to occupy him, he turned his attention to the white bird in the cage. Here was still life; and if the cage was narrow, yet the prisoner could hop about on the different perches. Soon it remained still, and looked at him with its bright eyes; and it seemed as if sense and speech lay in these eyes, only the interpretation was wanting. Night put an ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... sake,—indeed, they belong to him who can make them his by the right of superior strength. But every one has his own firm and sure possession of his friendships, while even if those things which seem the gifts of fortune remain, still life unadorned and deserted by friends cannot be happy. But enough has been said on this ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... duck pond. He was a bit of still life; a chip; weak water gruel; a tame rabbit, boiled to rags, without sauce or salt. He received my arguments with his mouth open, like a poorbox gaping for half-pence, and, good or bad, he swallowed ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... he said at last with some reluctance. "It's charming. There are some delightful touches—all that still life on the table, it might be a Chardin—and I like ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still life, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... it be otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the words in existence, or as if the ground were giving way under him and he were falling irresistibly from space to space into an awful, infinite, boundless void. His mind refused to work; he asked himself, horrified, whether this was still life, dared call itself life; Nature's glorious structure seemed to him ravaged like a wall rent by a storm, the speaking mouth of all these people struck him as nothing but a chasm convulsively and ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... everybody was in the agony of trying to compress half an hour's work into the fifteen minutes' stop of the long express train. The day was so hot that even the group of idlers which usually formed the still life of the picture was out of sight on the shady side of the buildings. Hackmen bustled noisily about; baggage masters were busier and crosser than ever; there was the usual melee of leave-takings and greetings. With the choking dust and scalding glare ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... war pictures in the past have been merely pictures that happened to represent war. Paolo Uccello's battle scenes are but pretexts for his peculiar version of the visible world. They might as well be still life for all the effect the subject has had upon his treatment of it. Leonardo, in his lost battle picture, was no doubt dramatic, and expressed in it his infinite curiosity; he has left notes about the manner in which fighting men and ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... just before his father's death, and upon whom she doated, was a magnificent piece of still life. Calm, placid, dignified, an infant Hercules for strength and fair proportions, grave as a judge, quiet as a flower, he was, in point of age, exactly at that most delightful period when children are very pleasant ...
— Country Lodgings • Mary Russell Mitford
... inspectin' the still life menagerie, when all of a sudden in from the hall rolls one of these invalid wheeled chairs with a funny little old bald-headed gent manipulatin' levers. What hair he has left is real white, and most of his face is covered with a thin growth of close-cropped ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... my ear the rhythmic strain Falls like faint memories of far-off times! When did I feel the sorrow, act the part, Which I have striv'n to shadow forth in song? In what dead century swept that mingled throng Of mighty pains and pleasures through my heart? Not in the yesterdays of that still life Which I have passed so free and far from strife, But somewhere in this weary world I know, In some strange land, beneath some orient clime, I saw or shared a martyrdom sublime, And felt a deeper grief than ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... Ignaz Walter produced a "Faust" in Hanover in 1797. Goethe's First Part had been five years in print when Spohr composed his "Faust," but it is based not on the great German poet's version of the legend, but on the old sources. This opera has still life, though it is fitful and feeble, in Germany, and was produced in London by a German company in 1840 and by an Italian in 1852, when the composer conducted it; but I have never heard of a representation in America. Between Spohr's "Faust," written in 1813 ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... me! Life, squalid, sordid, but still life, with its tavern corners and its brute pleasures of food and drink and warm sleep, living hands to hold and living laughter to gladden me—or a week of cloth of gold, of glory, of love—and ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and, drawing his kukri, struggled through the arresting creepers and undergrowth to where the stag lay feebly moving its limbs. Seizing one horn he performed the hallal, that is, he cut its throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so. For his religion enjoins this hygienic practice—borrowed by the Prophet from the Mosaic law—to guard against long-dead carrion being eaten. At the touch of the Colonel's hand Badshah sank to its knees; and Wargrave, very annoyed ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... occurred; although, possibly the uninitiated might experience some little difficulty at first in discriminating between what were meant for the figures of the principal personages of the story and the objects of still life depicted in the drawing, though otherwise it was an admirable ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... and fast and far they hied O'er dale and desert, wood and plain, each to his ingle-side! They hid themselves so closely that no hunter cared to roam Where these the timid subjects each had fashioned him a home! They were too wise for Teddy and they still life's blessings share, Though Teddy went a-huntin' them all loaded ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... conceived and distinctly drawn, and strong soliloquy and easy dialogue spring unaffectedly from their lips. He is a close observer of Nature, and reproduces her wilder effects of storm and gloom with singular vividness; while he is equally at home in his descriptions of still life, some of which remind us of the faithfully minute ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... an abundance of still life in the Gardens at this ungenial season. We find the Elephant, the Antelopes, and the Zebra, in their winter quarters, and their mightinesses, the large cats, as the lions, tiger, and leopards, accommodated with a snug fire. The tropical ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... sunlit, upland ways Falleth the shadow of impending Death, And still Life's flowers beneath his blighting breath To ashes wither, and to dust, her bays. What were the worth of hard-won power or praise? Awaits us all the grave-cell dark and deep, The greedy grave-worm's maw, the awful sleep When Death his cold hand on our pulses ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... were lined with sketches; heads, still life, landscapes, all subjects alike interested the painter. A rugged bust of Verdi, over life size, modeled in plaster, stood in one corner. On an easel rested a spirited portrait ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... the weather; nor is it probable that, after the failure of his early attempt to play the deliverer to Israel, he nourished further designs of that sort. He appears to have settled down quietly to be Jethro's son-in-law, and to have lived a modest, still life of humble toil. He had flung away fair prospects,—and what had he made of it? The world would say 'Nothing,' as it ever does about those who despise material advantages and covet higher good. Looking after sheep in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... cure by the fox, and the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to German national literature, but became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Thiers in the department of the Puy de Doue, on the bank of the little River Durolle, which is actually made to flow, or rather trickle over large stones; whilst smoke ascends from the chimney of an adjoining cottage. As a romantic picture of still life, its merits can scarcely be too highly spoken of, and when we say it is quite equal to Unterseen, by the same artist, and engraved in our last volume, we hope our readers will not be long ere they judge for themselves. We could have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... vur, Jeaene, your life is feaeir, An' God ha' been your steadvast friend, An' mid ye have mwore jay than ceaere, Vor ever, till your journey's end. An' I've a-watch'd ye on wi' pride, But now I soon mus' leaeve your zide, Vor you ha' still life's spring-tide zun, But my life, Jeaene, is now a-run To ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... strengthened when his fellow traveler raised the sash and looked impatiently up the idle track; and he had dismissed all doubt when Smith, conversing with the apathetic brakeman, crisply indicated his desire to return from a study of still life to the moving picture show for which he had paid admission. The elderly Bostonian had observed many New Yorkers, but it had never ceased to be a source of surprise to him why they all should be so incessantly restless with an electric anxiety to be getting somewhere else. To his own ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... intelligible needs no previous inquiry into the relative period and circumstances of the artists who created it. The landscape background, the rocky defile, the wooded declivity, and the trees laden with fruit, are all eminently beautiful. The eye would almost lose itself in this rich sense of still life if it were not constantly led back to the interest ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... litter of the floor were lay figures: one in the frock of a Vallombrosan monk, strangely surmounted by a helmet with barred visor, another smothered with brocade and skins hastily tossed over it. Amongst this heterogeneous still life, several speckled and white pigeons were perched or strutting, too tame to fly at the entrance of men; three corpulent toads were crawling in an intimate friendly way near the door-stone; and a white rabbit, apparently the model for that which was frightening Cupid in ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... that the artist who has made himself master of the drawing of the human figure, in its moral and physical expression, will succeed not only in portrait-painting, but in the delineation of animals, and even of still life, much better than if he had directed his attention to inferior objects. For the human figure in that point of consideration, in which it becomes a model to art, is more beautiful than any other in nature; and is distinguished, above ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt |
