| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 46242 |
| QUOTATION: | Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter’s art is more confirmed, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by painting must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have. There are, however, other intellectual qualities and dispositions which the painter can satisfy and affect as powerfully as the poet; among those we may reckon our love of novelty, variety, and contrast. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), British artist, critic. “Principles of Art and Simplicity,” Discourses (1798). |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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