~Appreciation.~--Contemporaries appreciate the man rather than the merit; but posterity will regard the merit rather than the man.--_Colton._
~Leisure.~--"Never less idle than when idle," was the motto which the admirable Vittoria Colonna wrought upon her husband's dressing-gown. And may we not justly regard our appreciation of leisure as a test of improved character and growing resources?--_Tuckerman._
who you want to meet and we’ll bring him to you.’ ‘Abraham is a hostage,’ Satyrus said. ‘You can’t bring him out of Athens, and I need to see him.’ His captains looked at him with something like suspicion. ‘I’m going to Athens,’ he insisted. ‘Without your fleet?’ Sandokes asked. ‘Haven’t you got this backward, lord? If you must go, why not lead with a show of force?’ ‘Can you go three days armed and ready to fight?’ Satyrus asked. ‘In the midst of the Athenian fleet? No. Trust me on this, friends. And obey – I pay your wages. Go to Aegina and wait.’ Sandokes was dissatisfied and he wasn’t interested in hiding it. ‘Lord, we do obey. We’re good captains and good fighters, and most of us have been with you a few years. Long enough to earn the right to tell you when you are just plain wrong.’ He took a breath. ‘Lord, you’re wrong. Take us into Athens – ten ships full of fighting men, and no man will dare raise a finger to you. Or better yet, stay here, or you go to Aegina and we’ll sail into Athens.’ Satyrus shrugged, angered. ‘You all feel this way?’ he asked. Sarpax shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Aekes and Sandokes have a point, but I’ll obey you. I don’t know exactly what your relationship with Demetrios is, and you do.’ He looked at the other captains. ‘We don’t know.’ Sandokes shook his head. ‘I’ll obey, lord – surely I’m allowed to disagree?’ Satyrus bit his lip. After a flash of anger passed, he chose his words carefully. ‘I appreciate that you are all trying to help. I hope that you’ll trust that I’ve thought this through as carefully as I can, and I have a more complete appreciation of the forces at work than any of you can have.’ Sandokes didn’t back down. ‘I hope that you appreciate that we have only your best interests at heart, lord. And that we don’t want to look elsewhere for employment while your corpse cools.’ He shrugged. ‘Our oarsmen are hardening up, we have good helmsmen and good clean ships. I wager we can take any twenty ships in these waters. No one – no one with any sense – will mess with you while we’re in the harbour.’ Satyrus managed a smile. ‘If you are right, I’ll happily allow you to tell me that you told me so,’ he said. Sandokes turned away. Aekes caught his shoulder. ‘There’s no changing my mind on this,’ Satyrus said. Sandokes shrugged. ‘We’ll sail for Aegina when you tell us,’ Aekes said. Satyrus had never felt such a premonition of disaster in all his life. He was ignoring the advice of a god, and all of his best fighting captains, and sailing into Athens, unprotected. But his sense – the same sense that helped him block a thrust in a fight – told him that the last thing he wanted was to provoke Demetrios. He explained as much to Anaxagoras as the oarsmen ran the ships into the water. Anaxagoras just shook his head. ‘I feel like a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘But I won’t change my mind.’ Anaxagoras sighed. ‘When we’re off Piraeus, I’ll go off in Miranda or one of the other grain ships. I want you to stay with the fleet,’ Satyrus said. ‘Just in case.’ Anaxagoras picked up the leather bag with his armour and the heavy wool bag with his sea clothes and his lyre. ‘Very well,’ he said crisply. ‘You think I’m a fool,’ Satyrus said. ‘I think you are risking your life and your kingdom to see Miriam, and you know perfectly well you don’t have to. She loves you. She’ll wait. So yes, I think you are being a fool.’ Satyrus narrowed his eyes. ‘You asked,’ Anaxagoras said sweetly, and walked away. 3 Attika appeared first out of the sea haze; a haze so fine and so thin that a landsman would not even have noticed how restricted was his visibility.
Next to excellence is the appreciation of it.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
To acquire certainty in the appreciation of things exactly as they are, and to know them in their due subordination, and in their proper relation to one another--this is really the highest enjoyment to which we ought to aspire, whether in the sphere of art, of nature, or of life.
The volume herewith presented is the natural result of the compiler's habit of transferring and classifying significant passages from known authors. No special course of reading has been pursued, the thoughts being culled from foreign and native tongues--from the moss-grown tomes of ancient literature and the verdant fields of to-day. The terse periods of others, appropriately quoted, become in a degree our own; and a just estimation is very nearly allied to originality, or, as the author of _Vanity Fair_ tells us, "Next to excellence is the appreciation of it." Without indorsing the idea of a modern authority that the multiplicity of facts and writings is becoming so great that every available book must soon be composed of extracts only, still it is believed that such a volume as "Pearls of Thought" will serve the interest of general literature, and especially stimulate the mind of the thoughtful reader to further research. The pleasant duty of the compiler has been to follow the expressive idea of Colton, and he has made the same use of books as a bee does of flowers,--she steals the sweets from them, but does not injure them.
By nothing do men more show what they are than by their appreciation of what is and what is not ridiculous.
Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers — for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings — let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals — and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
Barbarism is the non-appreciation of what is excellent.
Where is the capacity for heaven to come from if it be not developed on earth? Where, indeed, is even the smallest appreciation of God and heaven to come from when so little of spirituality has ever been known or manifested here? Natural Law, Degeneration, p. 116.
Not one man in five cycles, who is wise, will expect appreciative recognition from his fellows, or any one of them. Appreciation! Recognition! Is Jove appreciated? Why, ever since Adam, who has got to the meaning of his great allegory — the world? Then we pigmies must be content to have our paper allegories but ill comprehended.
And, with increasing refinement of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized that the unintentional slayer did not altogether deserve death; and, by a sort of compromise between the public and the private conception of justice, a sanctuary was provided in which he might take refuge from the avenger of blood.
Women have no appreciation of good looks; at least, good women have not.
That man is successful who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much, who has gained the respect of the intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.
Nicht grosseren Vortheil wusst' ich zu nennen / Als des Feindes Verdienst erkennen=--I know not a greater advantage than a due appreciation of the worth of an enemy.
The appreciation of the average visual graphisticator alone is worth the whole suaveness and decadence which abounds!!
You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the duration of his stay on this planet. Since neither the mouse nor the chimp knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this discovery. But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the centuries as relentlessly as hunger or sexual longing. The chimp that does not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end. And even if the animal experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
-- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
-- The Underground Grammarian
Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters. -- None of my socks match. -- I'm having all my plants neutered. -- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out. -- My yucca plant is feeling yucky. -- I'm touring China with a wok band. -- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night. -- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student named Basil Metabolism. -- There are important world issues that need worrying about. -- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush. -- I prefer to remain an enigma. -- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever. -- I feel a song coming on.
Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.
"Nonsense!" cried the latter. "He did not flatter me. It was I who found his appreciation flattering. I think you are a great deal more foolish than he is. He is simple, of course, but also very knowing. Just like myself."
"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.
For the first fourteen days, Gregor's parents could not bring themselves to come into the room to see him. He would often hear them say how they appreciated all the new work his sister was doing even though, before, they had seen her as a girl who was somewhat useless and frequently been annoyed with her. But now the two of them, father and mother, would often both wait outside the door of Gregor's room while his sister tidied up in there, and as soon as she went out again she would have to tell them exactly how everything looked, what Gregor had eaten, how he had behaved this time and whether, perhaps, any slight improvement could be seen. His mother also wanted to go in and visit Gregor relatively soon but his father and sister at first persuaded her against it. Gregor listened very closely to all this, and approved fully. Later, though, she had to be held back by force, which made her call out: "Let me go and see Gregor, he is my unfortunate son! Can't you understand I have to see him?", and Gregor would think to himself that maybe it would be better if his mother came in, not every day of course, but one day a week, perhaps; she could understand everything much better than his sister who, for all her courage, was still just a child after all, and really might not have had an adult's appreciation of the burdensome job she had taken on.
"I cannot have deceived myself," he said; "I must look upon the past in a false light. What!" he continued, "can I have been following a false path?--can the end which I proposed be a mistaken end?--can one hour have sufficed to prove to an architect that the work upon which he founded all his hopes was an impossible, if not a sacrilegious, undertaking? I cannot reconcile myself to this idea--it would madden me. The reason why I am now dissatisfied is that I have not a clear appreciation of the past. The past, like the country through which we walk, becomes indistinct as we advance. My position is like that of a person wounded in a dream; he feels the wound, though he cannot recollect when he received it. Come, then, thou regenerate man, thou extravagant prodigal, thou awakened sleeper, thou all-powerful visionary, thou invincible millionaire,--once again review thy past life of starvation and wretchedness, revisit the scenes where fate and misfortune conducted, and where despair received thee. Too many diamonds, too much gold and splendor, are now reflected by the mirror in which Monte Cristo seeks to behold Dantes. Hide thy diamonds, bury thy gold, shroud thy splendor, exchange riches for poverty, liberty for a prison, a living body for a corpse!" As he thus reasoned, Monte Cristo walked down the Rue de la Caisserie. It was the same through which, twenty-four years ago, he had been conducted by a silent and nocturnal guard; the houses, to-day so smiling and animated, were on that night dark, mute, and closed. "And yet they were the same," murmured Monte Cristo, "only now it is broad daylight instead of night; it is the sun which brightens the place, and makes it appear so cheerful."
_Wolf Goethe_ (Weimar, 1889) is a sympathetic appreciation by Otto Mejer, formerly president of the Lutheran consistory in Hanover. See also Jenny v. Gerstenbergk, _Ottilie von Goethe und ihre Söhne Walther und Wolf_ (Stuttgart, 1901), and the article on Maximilian Wolfgang von Goethe by Max F. Hecker in _Allgem. deutsche Biographie_, Bd. 49, _Nachträge_ (Leipzig, 1904). (W. A. P.) Entry: _A
Cornelius, as an oil painter, possessed but little technical skill, nor do his works exhibit any instinctive appreciation of colour. Even as a fresco painter his manipulative power was not great. And in critically examining the execution in colour of some of his magnificent designs, one cannot help feeling that he was, in this respect, unable to do them full justice. Cornelius and his associates endeavoured to follow in their works the spirit of the Italian painters. But the Italian strain is to a considerable extent modified by the Dürer heritage. This Dürer influence is manifest in a tendency to overcrowding in composition, in a degree of attenuation in the proportions of, and a poverty of contour in, the nude figure, and also in a leaning to the selection of Gothic forms for draperies. These peculiarities are even noticeable in Cornelius's principal work of the "Last Judgment," in the Ludwigskirche in Munich. The attenuation and want of flexibility of contour in the nude are perhaps most conspicuous in his frescoes of classical subjects in the Glyptothek, especially in that representing the contention for the body of Patroclus. But notwithstanding these peculiarities there is always in his works a grandeur and nobleness of conception, as all must acknowledge who have inspected his designs for the Ludwigskirche, for the Campo Santo, &c. If he were not dexterous in the handling of the brush, he could conceive and design a subject with masterly purpose. If he had an imperfect eye for colour, in the Venetian, the Flemish, or the English sense, he had vast mental foresight in directing the German school of painting; and his favourite motto of _Deutschland über alles_ indicates the direction and the strength of his patriotism. Karl Hermann was one of Cornelius's earliest and most esteemed scholars, a man of simple and fervent nature, painstaking to the utmost, a very type of the finest German student nature; Kaulbach and Adam Eberle were also amongst his scholars. Every public edifice in Munich and other German cities which were embellished with frescoes, became, as in Italy, a school of art of the very best kind; for the decoration of a public building begets a practical knowledge of design. The development of this institution of scholarship in Munich was a work of time. The cartoons for the Glyptothek were all by Cornelius's own hand. In the Pinakothek his sketches and small drawings sufficed; but in the Ludwigskirche the invention even of some of the subjects was entrusted to his scholar Hermann. Entry: CORNELIUS
KAHNIS, KARL FRIEDRICH AUGUST (1814-1888), German Lutheran theologian, was born at Greiz on the 22nd of December 1814. He studied at Halle, and in 1850 was appointed professor ordinarius at Leipzig. Ten years later he was made canon of Meissen. He retired in 1886, and died on the 20th of June 1888 at Leipzig. Kahnis was at first a neo-Lutheran, blessed by E. W. Hengstenberg and his pietistic friends. He then attached himself to the Old Lutheran party, interpreting Lutheranism in a broad and liberal spirit and showing some appreciation of rationalism. His _Lutherische Dogmatik, historisch-genetisch dargestellt_ (3 vols., 1861-1868; 2nd ed. in 2 vols., 1874-1875), by making concessions to modern criticism, by spiritualizing and adapting the old dogmas, by attacking the idea of an infallible canon of Scripture and the conventional theory of inspiration, by laying stress on the human side of Scripture and insisting on the progressive character of revelation, brought him into conflict with his former friends. A. W. Diekhoff, Franz Delitzsch (_Für und wider Kahnis_, 1863) and Hengstenberg (_Evangelische Kirchenzeitung_, 1862) protested loudly against the heresy, and Kahnis replied to Hengstenberg in a vigorous pamphlet, _Zeugniss für die Grundwahrheiten des Protestantismus gegen Dr Hengstenberg_ (1862). Entry: KAHNIS
There never has been a time when Handel has been overrated, except in so far as other composers have been neglected. But no composer has suffered so much from pious misinterpretation and the popular admiration of misleading externals. It is not the place here to dilate upon the burial of Handel's art beneath the "mammoth" performances of the Handel Festivals at the Crystal Palace; nor can we give more than a passing reference to the effects of "additional accompaniments" in the style of an altogether later age, started most unfortunately by Mozart (whose share in the work has been very much misinterpreted and corrupted) and continued in the middle of the 19th century by musicians of every degree of intelligence and refinement, until all sense of unity of style has been lost and does not seem likely to be recovered as a general element in the popular appreciation of Handel for some time to come. But in spite of this, Handel will never cease to be revered and loved as one of the greatest of composers, if we value the criteria of architectonic power, a perfect sense of style, and the power to rise to the most sublime height of musical climax by the simplest means. Entry: HANDEL
_'Tis Pity she's a Whore_ was translated into French by Maurice Maeterlinck under the title of _Annabella_, and represented at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in 1894. The translator prefixes to the version an eloquent appreciation of Ford's genius, especially in his portraits of women, whose fate it is to live "dans les ténèbres, les craintes et les larmes." Entry: _
_Dramatic Instrumentation._--There is hardly one of Wagner's orchestral innovations which is not inseparably connected with his adaptation of music to the requirements of drama; and modern conductors, in treating Wagner's orchestration, as the normal standard by which all previous and contemporary music must be judged, are doing their best to found a tradition which in another fifty years will be exploded as thoroughly as the tradition of symphonic additional accompaniments is now exploded in the performances of Bach and Handel. The main difference between symphonic and modern dramatic orchestration depends on this: that in a symphony any important incident will probably be heard again within five minutes, in every circumstance of formal symmetry and preparation that can attract the attention. This being so, it is absurd in a symphony to use only such orchestral colours as would be fit for dramatic moments which are not likely to recur for an hour or two, if they recur at all. Such a passage as bars 5 to 8 in the first movement of Beethoven's 8th symphony is as unintelligible from the point of view of Wagnerian opera as the opening of the _Rheingold_ is unintelligible from the point of view of symphony. But both are quite right. The modern Wagnerian conductor is apt to complain that Beethoven, in his four-bar phrase, drowns a melody which lies in the weakest register of the clarinet by a crowd of superfluous notes in oboes, horns and flutes. The complainer entirely overlooks the fact that this is the kind of music in which such a phrase will certainly be heard again before we have time to forget it; and as a matter of fact the strings promptly repeat it _fortissimo_ in a position which nothing can overpower. A crowd of instruments that seemed at first to overwhelm it in sympathetic comments is perfectly dramatic and appropriate on the symphonic scale. On the operatic scale established by Wagner such detail is simply lost. Far greater polyphonic detail of another kind is no doubt possible, but it requires far longer time for its expression. It cannot change so rapidly. It engages the ear more exclusively, and therefore it needs an accuracy and an elaboration of paraphernalia quite irrelevant to symphonic art. The accuracy and the paraphernalia are equally exemplified in all Wagner's additions and alterations of the classical orchestral scheme, for these all consist in completing the families of instruments so that each timbre can be presented pure in complete harmony. But the greatness of Wagner is shown in the fact that with all the effect his additions have in revolutionizing the resources of orchestration, he never regards his novelties as substitutes for the natural principles of instrumental effect. His brass instruments have lost nothing of their ancient nobility. In his gigantic designs it inevitably happens that instrumental resources are strained to their utmost, and there is, perhaps, hardly anything which the makers and players of instruments can be trained to do which is too remote to be demanded by some extreme dramatic necessity in Wagner's scheme. But it is always some such extreme necessity that demands it, and never an appetite too jaded for natural resources. The crucial example of this is what Richard Strauss has ingeniously called the "al fresco" treatment of instruments in large orchestral masses (Berlioz-Strauss, _Instrumentationslehre_, edition Peters). Experience shows that in the modern orchestra there is safety in numbers, and that passages may with impunity be written for thirty-two violins which no single player can execute clearly. Whether this justifies Wagner's successors and imitators in showing a constant preference for passages of which not even the general outline is practicable; whether it justifies a state of things in which the normal compass of every instrument in an advanced 20th-century score would appear to be about a fifth higher than any player of that instrument will admit; whether it proves that it is artistically desirable that when there are eight horns in the orchestra their material should be indistinguishable from pianoforte writing, and that, in short, the part of every instrument should look exactly like the part of every other--such questions are for posterity to decide. At present we can only be certain that the criterion according to which Brahms, being a symphonic writer, has no mastery of orchestration whatever, is not a criterion compatible with any sense of symphonic style. It is therefore not a criterion which can do justice to the principles of Wagner's non-symphonic art, for its appreciation thereof is inevitably one-sided. Least of all can it conduce to the formation of sound critical standards for the new instrumentation which is now in process of development for the future forms of instrumental music. These, we cannot doubt, will be as profoundly influenced by Wagner as the sonata style was influenced by Gluck. Entry: INSTRUMENTATION