work of art

• “But indeed this censure proceeds from that old heresy which supposes the proper effect of a work of art to depend on the imagined reality of the matter presented; that is, which substitutes the delusions of insanity for the half-voluntary illusions of a rational and refining pleasure.”

  Shakespeare His Life Art And Characters

• “Every pedestal that held a golden vase of peacock feathers or a priceless work of art was chryselephantine—delicately carved ivory inlaid with gold.”

  Simon & Schuster: Antony and Cleopatra

• “Andy, an eager six-year-old, arrives home proudly unfurling his tatteredmasterpiece, a richly textured, unintentionally abstract work of art whose provocative pigmentation resembles a montage of chunky peanut butter and lumpy marinara sauce.”

  Simon & Schuster: A Mind at a Time

• “A straight old man he was who took his way in silence through the meadows, having passed the period of communication with his fellows; his old experienced coat, hanging long and straight and brown as the yellow-pine bark, glittering with so much smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of art but naturalized at length.”

  A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

• “It could not speak in her voix tres douce et tres bonne, as a true work of art should.”

  Mary Queen Of Scotland And The Isles

• “Of particular relevance to ut pictura poesis, how - ever, is the rhetorical device of ekphrasis and “icon,” since both were used to designate a description of a work of art following the εἰκόνεσ (“icon”) of Philostratus”

  Dictionary of the History of Ideas

• “Mr. J.W. Cross, who has allowed us to be the first to usher this beautiful work of art to the world.”

  George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy

• “The Sonata Tragica is more of a traditional sonata than its successors, the Eroica, Op. 50, the Norse, Op. 57, and the Keltic, Op. 59, but as a work of art is less successful.”

  Edward MacDowell

• “Dressed in shorts, shirts and Akubra hats, they pose under a river red gum admiring a work of art they have assembled in the sand: a giant clitoris composed of river-bed rocks wrapped in pink cotton, an Antipodean riposte to the priapic Cerne Abbas Giant.”

  Simon & Schuster: Wildwood

• “Yutaka pours more cold sake into my cup, a small work of art in itself with frothy air bubbles suspended like jewels in the depths of the thick glass.”

  Simon & Schuster: The Best American Erotica 2006

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