#classic

Sin is the only real colour-element left in modern life.' 'You really must not say things like that before Dorian, Harry.' 'Before which Dorian? The one who is pouring out tea for us, or the one in the picture?' 'Before either.' 'I should like to come to the theatre with you, Lord Henry,' said the lad. 'Then you shall come; and you will come, too, Basil, won't you?' 'I can't, really. I would sooner not. I have a lot of work to do.' 'Well, then you and I will go alone, Mr. Gray.' 'I should like that awfully.' The painter bit his lip and walked over, cup in hand, to the picture. 'I shall stay with the real Dorian,' he said, sadly. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#fiction #life

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing -- fortifying and bracing -- seemingly just as was wanted -- sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure. ↗

— Jane Austen

#literature #satire #design

Handel's yearning for independence from the traditional chains of patronage and his persistence in monitoring his productions resulted with unique developments concerning Baroque 'opera seria'; however, paradoxically his personal obsession to obtain complete artistic freedom generated disastrous side-effects that eventually impeded the progress of opera in London. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#classical-music #composers #covent-garden #handel #london

Personally, I think young musicians need to learn to play more than one style. Jazz can only enhance the classical side, and classical can only enhance the jazz. I started out playing classical, because you have to have that as a foundation. ↗

— Doc Severinsen

#classical #enhance #foundation #i #i think

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire." [On British Labour politician Stafford Cripps.] ↗

— Winston Churchill

#classic-insult #vice #virtue #leadership

My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#excellence #life

Outside Styx's apartment was not the first time Rochester and I had met, or would it be the last. We first encountered each other at Haworth House in Yorkshire when my mind was young and the barrier between reality and make-believe had not yet hardened into the shell that cocoons us in adult life. The barrier was soft, pliable and, for a moment, thanks to the kindness of a stranger and the power of a good storytelling voice, I made the short journey--and returned. ↗

— Jasper Fforde

#characters #classic #reality #storytelling #life

And when long years and seasons wheeling brought around that point of time ordained for him to make his passage homeward, trials and dangers, even so, attended him even in Ithaca, near those he loved. ↗

— Homer

#journey #odyssey #love

Prophet may you be! If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth, when time is old and hath forgot itself, when waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy, and blind oblivion swallowed cities up, and mighty states characterless are grated to dusty nothing, yet let memory, from false to false, among false maids in love, upbraid my falsehood! ↗

— William Shakespeare

#ozymandias #vows #love

...but both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrived in the end to reach it. ↗

— Emily Brontë

#love