Quotes
Quotes about Art
Most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
No creature smarts so little as a fool.
Me let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;
Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And keep awhile one parent from the sky.
Bare the mean heart that lurks behind a star.
E'en copious Dryden wanted or forgot
The last and greatest art,--the art to blot.
Grac'd as thou art with all the power of words,
So known, so honour'd at the House of Lords.
How lov'd, how honour'd once avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee:
'T is all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.
Andromache! my soul's far better part.
Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
My heart detests him as the gates of hell.
Injustice, swift, erect, and unconfin'd,
Sweeps the wide earth, and tramples o'er mankind.
The mildest manners, and the gentlest heart.
Patroclus, lov'd of all my martial train,
Beyond mankind, beyond myself, is slain!
A mass enormous! which in modern days
No two of earth's degenerate sons could raise.
Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro
In all the raging impotence of woe.
'T is true, 't is certain; man though dead retains
Part of himself: the immortal mind remains.
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise.
'T is more by art than force of num'rous strokes.
Jove weighs affairs of earth in dubious scales,
And the good suffers while the bad prevails.
Behold on wrong
Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong!
A gen'rous heart repairs a sland'rous tongue.
Earth sounds my wisdom and high heaven my fame.
True friendship's laws are by this rule exprest,--
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
Yet taught by time, my heart has learn'd to glow
For others' good, and melt at others' woe.
Note 1.See Milton, Quotation 4.
There is no theme more plentiful to scan
Than is the glorious goodly frame of man.
Du Bartas: Days and Weeks, third day.
Note 25.Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus (Even the worthy Homer some times nods).--Horace: De Arte Poetica, 359.
