G Woodberry Quotes & Sayings

Always, some great culture is dying to enrich the soil of new harvests, some civlization is crumbling to rubbish to be the hill of a more beautiful city, some race is spending itself that a lower and more barbarous world may inherit its stored treasure house. — George Edward Woodberry

The growth of art seems to be in cycles, and often its vigorous lifetime is restricted to a century or two. The periods of distinctive drama, Greek, English, Spanish, fall within such a limit; the schools of painting and sculpture likewise; and, in poetry, the Victorian age or the school of Pope will serve as examples. — George Edward Woodberry

You must find the ideas that have some promise in them ... It is not enough to just have ideas. — George Edward Woodberry

My first recollection of hearing Wendell Phillips is from my college days, though of course he was always one of my heroes, and I may have heard him before, for we were an anti-slavery family. — George Edward Woodberry

Mankind is the grandest and surest artist of all, and history as it clarifies is, in pure fact, an artistic process, a creation in its fullness of the beautiful soul. — George Edward Woodberry

To be faithful to your instincts and the impulses that carry you in the direction of the excellence you most desire and value ... surely that is to lead the noble life. — George Edward Woodberry

Shakespeare is, essentially, the emanation of the Renaissance. The overflow of his fame on the Continent in later years was but the sequel of the flood of the Renaissance in Western Europe. He was the child of that great movement, and marks its height as it penetrated the North with civilization. — George Edward Woodberry

Words are intermediary between thought and things. We express ourselves really not through words, which are only signs, but through what they signify - through things. — George Edward Woodberry

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life? — George Edward Woodberry

What faith in man must in our new world beat, Thinking how once he saw before his face The west and all the host of stars retreat Into the silent infinite of space! — George Edward Woodberry

What holy cities are to nomadic tribes - a symbol of race and a bond of union - great books are to the wandering souls of men: they are the Meccas of the mind. — George Edward Woodberry

Who of English speech, bred to the traditions of his race, does not recognize Hamlet in his 'inky cloak' at a glance? Not to know him would argue one's self untaught in the chief glories of his language. — George Edward Woodberry

The critic is genius at one remove; he is not unlike an actor on the stage, and incarnates in his mind, as the actor embodies in his person, another's work; only thus does he understand art, realize it, know it; and having arrived at this, his task is done. — George Edward Woodberry

Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible. — George Edward Woodberry

The language of literature is the language of all the world. It is necessary to divest ourselves at once of the notion of diversified vocal and grammatical speech which constitutes the various tongues of the Earth, and conceals the identity of image and logic in the minds of all men. — George Edward Woodberry

To realize life in the abstract as noble or beautiful or humane, to set it forth so with radiance upon it, that is civilization in the arts. Shakespeare is the chief modern example of this supreme faculty of mankind. — George Edward Woodberry

I am quite sure that no friendship yields its true pleasure and nobility of nature without frequent communication, sympathy and service. — George Edward Woodberry

Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech. — George Edward Woodberry

The sweetest roamer is a boy's young heart. — George Edward Woodberry

If the aristocracy of the whole white race is so to melt in a world of the colored races of the Earth, I for one should only rejoice in such a divine triumph of the sacrificial idea in history; for it would mean the humanization of mankind. — George Edward Woodberry

Art has a double visage: it looks before and after. Romance is its forward-looking face. The germ of growth is in romanticism. Formalism, on the other hand, consolidates tradition; gleans what has been gained and makes it facile to the hand or the mind; economizes the energy of genius. — George Edward Woodberry

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. — George E. Woodberry

The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power. — George Edward Woodberry

Thrashing is not the most noticeably awful of disappointments. Not to have attempted is the genuine disappointment. — George Edward Woodberry

We foresee no limit to scientific advancement in the future, and in scientific truth there is nothing dead; science is always a living and growing body of knowledge; but art on the contrary has many times run its course to an end, and exhausted its vital power. — George Edward Woodberry

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire. — George Edward Woodberry

The world is a multiplicity, a harvest-field, a battle-ground; and thence arises through human contact ways of numbering, or mathematics, ways of tillage, or agriculture, ways of fighting, or military tactics and strategy, and these are incorporated in individuals as habits of life. — George Edward Woodberry

Always begin anew with the day, just as nature does. It is one of the sensible things that nature does. — George Edward Woodberry

You may name a bronze statue 'Liberty,' or a painted figure in a city hall 'Commerce,' or a marble form in a temple 'Athene' or 'Venus;' but what is really there is only a representation of a single woman. — George Edward Woodberry

It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and universal as in the material world. — George Edward Woodberry