Occupations

"Pygmalion loathing their lascivious life, Abhorr'd all womankind, but most a wife: So single chose to live, and shunn'd to wed, Well pleas'd to want a consort of his bed. Yet fearing idleness, the nurse of ill, In sculpture exercis'd his happy skill; And carv'd in iv'ry such a maid, so fair, As Nature could not with his art compare, Were she to work; but in her own defence Must take her pattern here, and copy hence. Pleas'd with his idol, he commends, admires, Adores; and last, the thing ador'd, desires. A very virgin in her face was seen, And had she mov'd, a living maid had been: One wou'd have thought she cou'd have stirr'd, but strove With modesty, and was asham'd to move. Art hid with art, so well perform'd the cheat, It caught the carver with his own deceit: He knows 'tis madness, yet he must adore, And still the more he knows it, loves the more: The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft, Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft. Fir'd with this thought, at once he strain'd the breast, And on the lips a burning kiss impress'd. 'Tis true, the harden'd breast resists the gripe, And the cold lips return a kiss unripe: But when, retiring back, he look'd again, To think it iv'ry, was a thought too mean: So wou'd believe she kiss'd, and courting more, Again embrac'd her naked body o'er."

"A means of display highly characteristic of the Roman empire was the arrangement of statues in tiers of niches adorning public buildings, including baths theaters, and amphitheaters. Several of the most impressive surviving statuary displays come from ornamental facades constructed in the Eastern provinces. Bolstered by wealth drawn from around the Mediterranean, the imperial families established their own palace culture that was later emulated by kings and emperors throughout Europe."

"By the end of the fifth century B.C., a few wealthy patrons began to exhibit panel paintings, murals, wall hangings, and mosaics in their houses. Ancient authors are vocal in their condemnation of the private ownership and display of such art objects as inappropriate luxuries (for example, Plato’s Republic, 372 D–373 A), yet pass no judgment on the statuettes these patrons also exhibited at home. The difference in attitude suggests that even in private space, statues retained religious significance."

"After a long time the great and awful Name was forgotten and the people, men, women and children, only recognized an image of wood or stone and the temple of wood or stone which they had been brought up from infancy to serve by bowing down. ... Abraham ... knew that all were mistaken and that what caused them to err was worship of the images which drove the Truth out of their minds."

"Colored statues? To us, classical antiquity means white marble. Not so to the Greeks, who thought of their gods in living color and portrayed them that way too. The temples that housed them were in color, also, like mighty stage sets. Time and weather have stripped most of the hues away. And for centuries people who should have known better pretended that color scarcely mattered. White marble has been the norm ever since the Renaissance, when classical antiquities first began to emerge from the earth. The sculpture of Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons struggling with serpents sent, it is said, by the sea god Poseidon (discovered in 1506 in Rome and now at the Vatican Museums) is one of the greatest early finds. Knowing no better, artists in the 16th century took the bare stone at face value. Michelangelo and others emulated what they believed to be the ancient aesthetic, leaving the stone of most of their statues its natural color. Thus they helped pave the way for neo-Classicism, the lily-white style that to this day remains our paradigm for Greek art. By the early 19th century, the systematic excavation of ancient Greek and Roman sites was bringing forth great numbers of statues, and there were scholars on hand to document the scattered traces of their multicolored surfaces. Some of these traces are still visible to the naked eye even today, though much of the remaining color faded, or disappeared entirely, once the statues were again exposed to light and air. Some of the pigment was scrubbed off by restorers whose acts, while well intentioned, were tantamount to vandalism. In the 18th century, the pioneering archaeologist and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann chose to view the bare stone figures as pure—if you will, Platonic—forms, all the loftier for their austerity. "The whiter the body is, the more beautiful it is as well," he wrote. "Color contributes to beauty, but it is not beauty. Color should have a minor part in the consideration of beauty, because it is not [color] but structure that constitutes its essence." Against growing evidence to the contrary, Winckelmann's view prevailed. For centuries to come, antiquarians who envisioned the statues in color were dismissed as eccentrics, and such challenges as they mounted went ignored."

"The Magi of Egypt looked round in every quarter for phenomena that might produce astonishment among their countrymen, and induce them to believe that they dwelt in a land which overflowed with the testimonies and presence of a divine power. Among others the statue of Memnon, erected over his tomb near Thebes, is recorded by many authors. Memnon is said to have been the son of Aurora, the Goddess of the morning; and his statue is related to have had the peculiar faculty of uttering a melodious sound every morning when touched by the first beams of day, as if to salute his mother; and every night at sunset to have imparted another sound, low and mournful, as lamenting the departure of the day. This prodigy is spoken of by Tacitus, Strabo, Juvenal and Philostratus. The statue uttered these sounds, while perfect; and, when it was mutilated by human violence, or by a convulsion of nature, it still retained the property with which it had been originally endowed. Modern travellers, for the same phenomenon has still been observed, have asserted that it does not owe its existence to any prodigy, but to a property of the granite, of which the statue or its pedestal is formed, which, being hollow, is found in various parts of the world to exhibit this quality. It has therefore been suggested, that the priests, having ascertained its peculiarity, expressly formed the statue of that material, for the purpose of impressing on it a supernatural character, and thus being enabled to extend their influence with a credulous people."

"The men who ushered in the Dark Ages were men like Theodoric and Cassiodorus, who were intent on restoring the cities, preserving the statues, and transcribing the classics. Their adoration of the ancient world was matched only by their inability to understand it, for by the time that they were born, classical culture was already dead. They were the first of the great medievals and began to build a new civilization in an attempt to restore the old."

"In general, just as painters in working from models constantly gaze at their exemplar and thus strive to transfer the expression of the original to their own artistry, so too he who is anxious to make himself perfect in all the kinds of virtue must gaze upon the lives of the saints as upon statues, so to speak, that move and act, and must make their excellence his own by imitation."

"A friend peering up at early-20th-century polychrome terra cottas of mythological figures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art once remarked to me: “There is no way the Greeks were that gauche.” How did color become gauche? Where does this aesthetic disgust come from? To many, the pristine whiteness of marble statues is the expectation and thus the classical ideal. But the equation of white marble with beauty is not an inherent truth of the universe. Where this standard came from and how it continues to influence white supremacist ideas today are often ignored. Most museums and art history textbooks contain a predominantly neon white display of skin tone when it comes to classical statues and sarcophagi. This has an impact on the way we view the antique world."

"The marble index of a mind forever Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone."

"So stands the statue that enchants the world, So bending tries to veil the matchless boast, The mingled beauties of exulting Greece."

"The sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature."

"Then marble, soften'd into life, grew warm."

"The Paphian Queen to Cnidos made repair Across the tide to see her image there: Then looking up and round the prospect wide, When did Praxiteles see me thus? she cried."

"And the cold marble leapt to life a God."

"Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater To raise the dead to life than to create Phantoms that seem to live."

"Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature, That fashions all her works in high relief, And that is Sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth, Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire; Men, women, and all animals that breathe Are statues, and not paintings."

"Ex pede Herculem."

"In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoön how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal."

"Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought."

"A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty."

"Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius."

"The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mould, The more the marble wastes The more the statue grows."

"If the bookseller happens to desire a privilege for his merchandize, whether he is selling Rabelais or the Fathers of the Church, the magistrate grants the privilege without answering for the contents of the book."

"If I publish this poem for you, speaking as a trader, I shall be a considerable loser. Did I publish all I admire, out of sympathy with the author, I should be a ruined man."

"Yon second-hand bookseller is second to none in the worth of the treasures which he dispenses."

"But I account the use that a man should seek of the publishing of his own writings before his death, to be but an untimely anticipation of that which is proper to follow a man, and not to go along with him."

"To capture a publisher’s attention, to convince, to negotiate: these constitute one step forward into the world of writers, one distress, one guilt. One guilt among the many yet to come, all of which bide their time to loom up out of their hiding places, for the path is long and there is an ambush at every turn. Writing: not letting it merely haunt you and die over and over again in you until you no longer know how to speak. Getting published: not loathing yourself, not burning it, not giving up."

"There is a prohibition against including multiple copies (or versions) of the same paper in the 'official publication of record' in [IEEE] Xplore."

"It is an axiom in the publishing business, however, that pseudoscience will always sell more books than the real science that debunks it."

"The idea of progress … is that human knowledge tends continually to advance because each generation can build on the achievements of the preceding one. Yet, there is an unstated presupposition here regarding the matter of transmission. Faith in progress is based on the (very un-Socratic) assumption that wisdom or knowledge can not only be taught but can be “published” in the modern sense: written down in books in such a way as to be easily and genuinely appropriated, so that the next generation, after a brief period of learning, can begin where the previous one left off. ... In the modern period, the whole enterprise of philosophy and science has been organized around this idea of progress. The pursuit of knowledge has become uniquely “socialized,” become a team effort, a collective undertaking, both across generations and across individuals within a single generation. This has affected our whole experience of the intellectual life. The modern scholar or scientist ultimately does not—and cannot—live to think for himself in the quiet of his study. He lives to “make a contribution” to an ongoing, public enterprise, to what “we know.” And at the core of this effort at collective knowing is the modern institution of publication."

"“You’re telling me he’s too good to get published?” I was aghast. “Oh, yes, Mr. Wickham, you live in an exceedingly commercial era. Your editors understand that they cannot sell champagne to beer drinkers. They buy what sells.”"

"Publishers are so corrupted by our money system that you can't really trust what they say."

"I published my first book in 1983. My mentor told me that publishing a book is a dangerous act. If you publish a bad book, it is a sin you will keep committing even after your death. Every time someone reads your book and takes in false information, you sin again, and this adds to your record. But maybe the opposite is also true. If you write a good book, you will continue earning merit when people read it, even after you are gone."

"...do not be impressed by the imprint of a famous publishing house or the volumes of an author's publications. Bear in mind that Einstein needed only seventeen pages for his contribution which revolutionized physics, while there are graphomanics in asylums who use up mounds of paper every day. Remember that publishers want to keep the printing presses busy and do not object to nonsense if it can be sold."

"Publish or perish."

"I'll print it, And shame the fools."

"The jour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case, He turns his quid of tobacco, while his eyes blur with the manuscript."

"Memoriæ sacrum Typographia Ars artium omnium Conservatrix Hic primum inventa Circa annum MCCCCXL."

"Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school: and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill."

"It was William Morris who in modern times first joined these two words [bookmaking and art] together by the publication of his magnificent Kelmscott volumes. Such type, such decorations, such presswork, such sheer, composite beauty! ... from the very beginning Morris' innovations showed the world that printing still belonged among the fine arts."

"Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print."

"Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing, papermaking, and so forth. … All children will work better if pleased with their tools; and there are no tools more ingeniously wrought, or more potent than those which belong to the art of the printer. Dynasties and governments used to be attacked and defended by arms; now the attack and the defence are mainly carried on by types. To sustain any scheme of state policy, to uphold one administration or to demolish another, types, not soldiers, are brought into line. Hostile parties, and sometimes hostile nations, instead of fitting out martial or naval expeditions, establish printing presses, and discharge pamphlets or octavoes at each other, instead of cannon balls. The poniard and the stiletto were once the resource of a murderous spirit; now the vengeance, which formerly would assassinate in the dark, libels character, in the light of day, through the medium of the press. But through this instrumentality good can be wrought as well as evil. Knowledge can be acquired, diffused, perpetuated. An invisible, inaudible, intangible thought in the silent chambers of the mind, breaks away from its confinement, becomes imbodied in a sign, is multiplied by myriads, traverses the earth, and goes resounding down to the latest posterity."

"After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature... Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than all those produced in the past thousand years. Through them there has today been created a new theology and a new jurisprudence; the Paracelsians have created medicine anew and the Copernicans have created astronomy anew. I really believe that at last the world is alive, indeed seething, and that the stimuli of these remarkable conjunctions did not act in vain."

"The discovery of the art of Printing unbarred afresh the gates of Heaven, and let in that flood of light, of knowledge, and of wisdom, which enabled men to emancipate themselves again from the slavery of superstition—to take their proper place in the ranks of created beings—and in ennobling themselves, in gradually exalting their understandings and amending their hearts, to pay at length the worthiest homage to the goodness of their common Parent, and prove themselves to be—as the Almighty himself originally formed them—inferior only to the Angels."

"The art of printing had been introduced in Iceland in the days of Bishop Jón Arason and probably by him."

"It is remarkable that whilst the Doctors of the Sorbonne were urging Francis the First absolutely to suppress printing even as late as 1533 and whilst this enlightened monarch had actually issued letters-patent January 3 1535 prohibiting under pain of death any person to print any book or books, and ordering all booksellers' shops to be closed under the same penalty, the Jews should have hailed with delight this invention as a Divine gift and sung its praises because it enabled them to multiply and circulate the word of God."

"Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts."

"He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new Democratic world: he had invented the Art of printing."

"O pilot! 'tis a fearful night, There's danger on the deep."