A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)
Source: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, p. 90
§ 129
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Context: The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.
“Familiar acts are beautiful through love.”
The Earth, Act IV, l. 403
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)
En.wikiquote.org - Alexander Calder / Quotes / 1930s / Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)
1930s, Statement from Modern Painting and Sculpture (1933)
“The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.”
In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new. ~ Samuel Johnson, "The Life of Alexander Pope" from Lives of the English Poets (1781) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/lvpc10.txt
Misattributed
On meeting Michèle Duvalier, quoted by Christopher Hitchens in The Missionary Position http://books.google.com/books?id=PTgJIjK67rEC&pg=PA11&dq=%22I+think+it+is+very+beautiful+for+the+poor+to+accept+their+lot%22, (Verso, 1995), page 5
1990s
“Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,
Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.”
Act I, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
