Splendour Quotes - Page 5

• Architecture is, to a certain extent, a sensual gratification. It addresses itself to the eye, and affords the best scope for the parade of barbaric pomp and splendour. It is the form in which the revenues of a semi-civilized people are most likely to be lavished. The most gaudy and ostentatious specimens of it, and sometimes the most stupendous, have been reared by such hands. It is one of the first steps in the great march of civilization.

  William H. Prescott

  Eye, Hands, Civilization

  William H. PRESCOTT (1873). “History of the Conquest of México”, p.173

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• The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Wall, Fall, Blow

  'The Princess' (1847) pt. 4, song (added 1850)

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• Kings ought never to be seen upon the stage. In the abstract, they are very disagreeable characters: it is only while living that they are 'the best of kings'. It is their power, their splendour, it is the apprehension of the personal consequences of their favour or their hatred that dazzles the imagination and suspends the judgement of their favourites or their vassals; but death cancels the bond of allegiance and of interest; and seen AS THEY WERE, their power and their pretensions look monstrous and ridiculous.

  William Hazlitt

  Kings, Character, Imagination

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Characters of Shakespeare's Plays”, p.158

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• Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.

  Plotinus

  Cutting, Light, Perfect

  Plotinus (1952). “The Six Enneads”, p.47, Hayes Barton Press

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