United States or Algeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The arrangement of the Pennsylvania building is formal, owing to its symmetry, but not at all heavy. Its decorative detail is full of interest, and to discover Hornbostel of New York, the designer of the Oakland City Hall, as the author of this building, is a pleasant surprise. Of most of the other state buildings, really nothing original could be claimed.
Although we are accustomed to hear that order, symmetry, unity in variety, was the Greek, and in particular the Platonic, formula for beauty, we observe, on examining the passages cited in evidence, that it is rather the moral quality appertaining to these characteristics that determines them as beautiful; symmetry is beautiful, because harmonious, and inducing order and self-restraint.
There was not a dead tree in the larch copse which dipped to the stream, and all its feathery tassels were sprinkled with tiny flecks of crimson and wondrous green. Great oaks dotted the meadows, each one perfect in symmetry. It seemed that the men who held this land cared for single trees.
Whistler has sought to vary the arabesque in the direction of greater naturalness. He has broken the severity of the line, which the lace handkerchief and the hands scarcely stayed in the first picture, by placing the philosopher's hat upon his knees, he has attenuated the symmetry of the picture-frames on the walls, and has omitted the black curtain which drops through the earlier picture.
As the intelligence and passion of the race develop, they cling to and nourish their beloved and sacred legend; leaf by leaf it expands under the touch of more pure affections, and more delicate imagination, until at last the perfect fable burgeons out into symmetry of milky stem and honied bell.
The time is gradually passing away when the intelligent practical farmer will be willing to put his cows to any bull, simply because his services may be had for twenty-five cents; for, even if the progeny is to go to the butcher, the calf sired by a pure-bred bull particularly of a race distinguished for fineness of bone, symmetry of form, and early maturity will bring a much higher price at the same age than a calf sired by a scrub.
I can hardly speak with the same authority as a breeder, generally, that I can as a feeder; yet I have been a close observer now for many years, and devoted my earnest attention to the improvement of the Aberdeen and Angus polled breed of cattle, with respect to size, symmetry, fineness of bone, strength of constitution, and disposition to accumulate fat, sparing no expense in obtaining the finest animals from the purest stock.
He was a man of very remarkable appearance, of about thirty-five. His features were of perfect symmetry, and I may almost say, of perfect beauty. His hair was the darkest I had ever seen, glossy and shining; his eyes large, black, and melancholy; but that which most struck me was his complexion. It might be called olive, it is true, but it was a livid olive.
Truth it seems to me is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision.
All human movement is a variation upon symmetry, and without symmetry it would not be variation; it would be lawless, fortuitous, and as dull and broadcast as lawless art.