The drama's laws the drama's patrons give._x000D_ _x000D_ For we that live to please must please to live.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that artists must cater to the tastes of their audience in order to succeed.
Samuel Johnson's quote reflects the relationship between creators and their audience, suggesting that the rules and expectations set by patrons dictate the form and content of artistic work. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity for artists to meet these expectations in order to sustain their livelihood, thus illustrating the tension between artistic integrity and commercial viability.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of audience feedback in artistic creation.
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.
I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)
Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.
But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate β it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.
Theatre is a game of hide-and-seek. For both the hiders and the seekers, the thrill is in the discovery. When the rules of the game are too vague or too complicated, however, the audience can lose its urge to play; the prize no longer seems quite worth the hunt.
You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.