Proportion Quotes - Page 27

• It is proportion that beautifies everything, the whole universe consists of it, and music is measured by it.

  Orlando Gibbons

  Music Is, Whole, Universe

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• There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Justice, Feelings, Humanity

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.128

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• This high proportion of history's decisive campaigns, the significance of which is enhanced by the comparative rarity of the direct approach, enforces the conclusion that the indirect is by far the most hopeful and economic form of strategy.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Hopeful, Direct Approach

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• Let us never forget that an age prospers or dwindles in proportion to its devotion to the Holy Eucharist. This is the measure of its spiritual life and its faith, of its charity and its virtue.

  Peter Julian Eymard

  Spiritual, Holy Eucharist, Age

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• Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Rich Or Poor, Long

  Samuel Johnson (1824). “Works: With an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.135

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• We have now felled forest enough everywhere, in many districts far too much. Let us restore this one element of material life to its normal proportions, and devise means for maintaining the permanence of its relations to the fields, the meadows and the pastures, to the rain and the dews of heaven, to the springs and rivulets with which it waters down the earth.

  George Perkins Marsh

  Spring, Rain, Mean

  George Perkins Marsh, Stephen C. Trombulak (2001). “So Great a Vision: The Conservation Writings of George Perkins Marsh”, p.186, UPNE

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• The obscurity of a writer is generally in proportion to his incapacity.

  Quintilian

  Obscurity, Incapacity

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• There is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.

  Thomas Browne

  Order, Giving, Understanding

  'Religio Medici' (1643) pt. 2, sect. 9

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• A man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance. Man's natural tendency is to egotism. Man, in his infancy of knowledge, thinks that all creation was formed for him.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Ignorance, Men, Thinking

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• A man of genius is inexhaustible only in proportion as he is always renourishing his genius.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Men, Genius, Exhaustion

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• The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Long, Poetry, Pages

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• Thought is valuable in proportion as it is generative.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Valuable

  "Caxtoniana". Essay XIV, 1863.

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• A good form strikes all eyes pleasantly, long before they have any science on the subject; and a beautiful face sets twenty hearts in palpitation, prior to all consideration of the mechanical proportions of the features and head.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Eye, Heart

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.152

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• The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order.

  William Shakespeare

  Order, Office, Priorities

  'Troilus And Cressida' (1602) act 1, sc. 3, l. 85

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• Treason and murder ever kept together, As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose, Working so grossly in a natural cause That admiration did not whoop at them; But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in Wonder to wait on treason and on murder; And whatsoever cunning fiend it was That wrought upon thee so preposterously Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

  William Shakespeare

  Two, Voice, Waiting

  William Shakespeare (1995). “King Henry V: Third Series”, p.174, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• An accomplished coquette excites the passions of others, in proportion as she feels none herself.

  William Hazlitt

  Passion, Coquette, Coquetry

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• In my opinion painting should be considered excellent in proportion as it approaches the effect of relief, while relief should be considered bad in proportion as it approaches the effect of painting.

  Michelangelo

  Relief, Opinion, Painting

  Quoted in Robert J Clements (ed) Michelangelo: A Self-Portrait (1968).

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• Every fault of the mind becomes more conspicuous and more guilty in proportion to the rank of the offender

  Juvenal

  Mind, Faults, Guilty

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• Eye me, blest Providence, and square my trial To my proportion'd strength.

  John Milton

  Eye, Squares, Trials

  John Milton, Henry John Todd (1809). “The Poetical Works of John Milton,: With Notes of Various Authors. To which are Added Illustrations, and Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton,”, p.298

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• A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Beautiful, Art, Thinking

  Evelyn Waugh (1983). “The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh”, Methuen

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• The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part.

  Henri Matisse

  Play, Space, Empty

  Henri Matisse, Susan Lambert, Victoria and Albert Museum (1981). “Matisse lithographs”

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• The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.

  John Ruskin

  Beauty, Animal, Intellectual

  John Ruskin (1849). “Of ideas of beauty”, p.97

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• Any writer worth his salt knows that only a small proportion of literature does nore than partly compensate people for the damage they have suffered in learning to read.

  Rebecca West

  People, Doe, Literature

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• You will have to scrutinize the model sharply to find the proportions - how the weight is supported, how each joint is functioning... Look for the color and tone and texture... how the light falls on the figure, especially the face.

  Howard Pyle

  Fall, Color, Light

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• Proportion and propriety are among the best secrets of domestic wisdom; and there is no surer test of integrity than a well-proportioned expenditure.

  Hannah More

  Integrity, Secret, Tests

  Hannah More (1838). “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife. Comprehending observations on domestic habits and manners, religion and morals ... With a memoir of the author”, p.253

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