“This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another.”
— Herodotus, The Histories, Vol. I (trans. G. C. Macaulay)
“Methods were discovered and evolved whereby powerfully dramatic scenes could be reproduced, subtilty of expression in either serious or humorous vein could be communicated to numberless people--their emotions played upon, laughter or tears evoked at will--in other words, the Silent Drama was born.”
— Henry Albert Phillips, The Photodrama (1914)
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?”
— Anonymous (Hebrew Psalmist), The Book of Psalms (King James Version) (1611)
“Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms”
— Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (1925) (1925)
“It must be glorious to write in the presence of great Mother Nature--a joy withheld from me, for, instead of stimulating, the sea, the mountain peaks, the glories of this beautiful earth absorb me so completely that I have no room, no outlet for expression. I only feel. I can but describe the moon from her reflection at the bottom of a well.”
— Hector Berlioz, The Life of Hector Berlioz as Written by Himself in His Letters and Memoirs (trans. Katharine F. Boult, 1903) (1855)
“It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her.”
— John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume 1 (1843)
“And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! / And he is no mean preacher; / Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.”
— William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads (1798) (1798)
“It is sometimes out of the oldest dream that the youngest vision is born.”
— Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (1922)
“Why, who makes much of a miracle? / As to me I know of nothing else but miracles”
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1892 edition) (1892)
“The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest poet.”
— Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works (1855)
“To-day I went on foot to the Vatican and sat a long while in the Sistine Chapel. Here a miracle was worked. I felt--almost for the first time in my life--an artistic ecstasy for painting.”
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Modeste Tchaikovsky (trans. Rosa Newmarch, 1906) (1880)
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet (Essays: Second Series) (1844)
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