Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Samuel Butler

Quote by Samuel Butler

“I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism - better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear and trembling.”

Quote by Samuel Butler

Book:Erewhon, or Over The Range
Create image

Work

Erewhon, or Over The Range

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler was an English poet celebrated for his satirical and philosophical works. Living during the English Renaissance, he is known for his wit and critical thinking. Butler's poetry often reflected on the human condition and the complexities of society. more

You May Also Like

“In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love, not the love with which so many stories end – the love of fidelity, kindness and fertility – but the other side of love, its cruelty, sterility and duplicity. In a way, the decadents did accept Nordau's idea of the artist as monster. But in nature, the glory and panacea of romanticism, they found nothing. Theirs is an aesthetic that disavows the natural and with it the body. The truly beautiful body is dead, because it is empty. Decadent work is always morbid, but its attraction to death is through art. What they refused was the condemnation of that monster. And yet despite the decadent celebration of artifice, these stories record art's failure in the struggle against natural horror. Nature fights back and wins, and decadent writing remains a remarkable account of that failure.”

ArtDeathNatureIllusionEmptyDeadRomanticismDecadenceMorbidArtificeDecadent
Book:The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France
Create image

“Like symbolism, decadence puts forth the idea that the function of literature is to evoke impressions and 'correspondences', rather than to realistically depict the world. ... the decadent aestheticized decay and took pleasure in perversity. In decadent literature, sickness is preferable to health, not only because sickness was regarded as more interesting, but because sickness was construed as subversive, as a threat to the very fabric of society. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy and the deviant, the decadents attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived as the chief enemy of art.”

ArtSicknessBourgeoisSymbolismSubversiveDecadencePerversityDecadentDeviantMarginalLiterature Decay
Author:Asti Hustvedt
Create image

“He doesn't believe in talking too much about art, especially while you're looking at it. The pressure to appreciate is the great enemy of actual enjoyment. Most people don't know what they like because they feel obligated to like so many different things. They feel they're supposed to be overwhelmed, so instead of looking, they spend their time thinking up something to say, something intelligent, or at least clever.”

Art
Book:The Sixteen Pleasures
Create image

“And I understand my sisters when they say every woman has a story that's been told a maxim of one soul, maybe less And that is why you'll never hear me call a woman slut, bitch or a dyke, No matter what she does, because I do not blame her I blame the men who have emotionally and physically raped her, I blame these corporations whose images tell them they hate her, And I put my arms on her shoulder and tell her how great to life and to God that SHE created her”

GodInspirational LoveWomen S Strength
Author:Mark Gonzales
Create image

“ما أشبه نفوسنا بتربة طيبة في جوهرها لا تعوزها عناصر الخصب و الإزدهار إلا أنها أصبحت على تعاقب الأزمنة صلبة متماسكة بجذورها المتحجرة لا يزكو فيها نبات جديد فنحن أحوج ما نكون إلا محراث ضخم حديد المخالب تحرث به تلك التربة فيقيض مضاجع تلك الجذور و هل المحراث إلا العزيمة و الجرأة ؟”

ArtHumor
Author:محمود تيمور
Create image