Vulgar words in On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 61 ~ ~ ~
It did not matter in our dynasties of determined noblesse how many things an industrious blockhead knew, or how curious things a lucky booby had discovered.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 2,218 ~ ~ ~
Orpheus with his lute,--Jubal with his harp and horn,--Harmonia, bride of the warrior seed-sower,--Musica herself, lady of all timely thought and sweetly ordered things,--Cantatrice and Incantatrice to all but the museless adder; these the Amphion of Fésole saw, as he shaped the marble of his tower; these, Memmi of Siena, fair-figured on the shadows of his vault;--but for us, here is the only manifestation granted to our best practical painter--a vagrant with harmonium--and yonder blackbirds and iridescent jackasses, to be harmonized thereby.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 3,435 ~ ~ ~
If that light within become but a more active kind of darkness;--if, abdicating the measuring reed of modesty for scepter, and ceasing to measure with it, we dip it in such unctuous and inflammable refuse as we can find, and make our soul's light into a _tallow_ candle, and thenceforward take our guttering, sputtering, ill-smelling illumination about with us, holding it out in fetid fingers--encumbered with its lurid warmth of fungous wick, and drip of stalactitic grease--that we may see, when another man would have seen, or dreamed he saw, the flight of a divine Virgin--only the lamplight upon the hair of a costermonger's ass;--that, having to paint the good Samaritan, we may see only in distance the back of the good Samaritan, and in nearness the back of the good Samaritan's dog;--that having to paint the Annunciation to the Shepherds, we may turn the announcement of peace to men, into an announcement of mere panic to beasts; and, in an unsightly firework of unsightlier angels, see, as we see always, the feet instead of the head, and the shame instead of the honor;--and finally concentrate and rest the sum of our fame, as Titian on the Assumption of a spirit, so we on the dissection of a carcass,--perhaps by such fatuous fire, the less we walk, and by such phosphoric glow, the less we shine, the better it may be for us, and for all who would follow us.