The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate it at another; and each labors first to impose upon himself and then to propagate the imposture.
Interpretation
Art lovers experience intense emotions and feel compelled to share those feelings with others.
In this quote, Samuel Johnson highlights the dual nature of art appreciation, where individuals both experience deep rapture when engaging with art and feel the need to convey those feelings to others. This cycle emphasizes the transformative power of art and the social aspect of sharing one's emotional responses, suggesting that artists and art lovers alike are influenced by a desire to express and communicate their subjective experiences, even if they sometimes feel like they are deceiving themselves in the process.
In practice
This quote can be used in an art critique to explain the emotional journey of experiencing and discussing art.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.
I'm involved in all things musical. It's all consuming, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest as a record or a concert.
'Art or anti-art?' was the question I asked when I returned from Munich in 1912 and decided to abandon pure painting or painting for its own sake. I thought of introducing elements alien to painting as the only way out of a pictorial and chromatic dead end.
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
Because anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just "talents."
When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.