Ernest Bramah Quotes

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

No – we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

The singular point of beautiful objects, and people, is that they are experienced not as parts, or ratios between cheekbones and chin, but as wholes. The experience of beauty is a perception, but it is one that mixes up various other sensations and makes them converge in a particular way.

Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.

There is nothing, in itself, valuable or despicable, desirable or hateful, beautiful or deformed; but that these attributes arise from the particular constitution and fabric of human sentiment and affection.

Beauty is no material thing. Beauty cannot be copied. Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of the seer. No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensitive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleasurable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty.

I don't know if I could, like, see a face and know what the face of beauty looks like, but after I've seen it I know if I've felt like it was beauty.

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

I think beauty is a feeling that you get after you've had an experience. It's the way you feel about it that is beautiful.

Beauty reveals itself in the course of an experience with an object.

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.

One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.

When beauty is universal, it loses its power to move the heart, and only its absence can produce any emotional effect.

I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.

One of the challenges assembling the film was that gun fight went on for three and a half hours and we obviously couldn't spend three and a half hours of the film with one gun fight. It was trying to figure out the balance of how much an audience could take before they either became repulsed or desensitized or bored or just overwhelmed.

I don't know why people see the things that they do. I wouldn't pay to see them, they don't touch me or move me in any way.

But in many orders of beauty, particularly those of the finer arts, it is requisite to employ much reasoning, in order to feel the proper sentiment; and a false relish may frequently be corrected by argument and reflection. There are just grounds to conclude, that moral beauty partakes of this latter species, and demands the assistance of our intellectual faculties, in order to give it a suitable influence on the human mind.

The truth is that art does not teach; it makes you feel, and any teaching that may arise from the feeling is an extra, and must not be stressed too much. In the modern world, and in Canada as much as anywhere, we are obsessed with the notion that to think is the highest achievement of mankind, but we neglect the fact that thought untouched by feeling is thin, delusive, treacherous stuff.

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

You do not need to know anything about a plant to know that it is beautiful.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

Poetry, she thought, wasn't written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

Beauty is where you find it.

I learned a little of beauty - enough to know that it had nothing to do with truth.