Quote

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Alistair Cooke

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alistair Cooke
Age: 95 †
Born: 1908
Born: November 20
Died: 2004
Died: March 30
Journalist
Radio Personality
Television Presenter
Writer
Salford
Greater Manchester
States
Products
Preserves
Best
Works
Poem
Firsts
Took
Definition
First
Painting
Final
Coined
Work
Building
Definitions
Roger
Mind
State
Finals
Chair
Think
Whether
Valuable
Preserve
Thinking
Art
Finished
Chairs

More quotes by Alistair Cooke

Image
People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back.
Alistair Cooke
Image
Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper.
Alistair Cooke
Image
There is even - as with no other game - a fascinating detective literature, a wry commentary on the human comedy, implicit in the book of rules.
Alistair Cooke
Image
Every sport pretends to a literature, but people don't believe it of any other sport but their own.
Alistair Cooke
Image
It rose slowly like a gull sensing a reckless blue fish to close to the surface, and then it dived relentlessly for the green, kicked and stopped three feet short of the flag.
Alistair Cooke
Image
[In 1889] the last big tract of Indian land was declared open for settlement, in Oklahoma. The claimants and the speculators mounted their horses and lined up like trotters waiting for a starting gun. The itchy ones jumped the gun and were ever after known as Sooners-and Oklahoma was thereafter called the Sooner State.
Alistair Cooke
Image
They have been playing golf for 800 years and nobody has satisfactorily said why.
Alistair Cooke
Image
It is a wonderful tribute to the game or to the dottiness of the people who play it that for some people somewhere there is no such thing as an insurmountable obstacle, an unplayable course, the wrong time of the day or year.
Alistair Cooke
Image
When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio because the pictures were better.
Alistair Cooke
Image
It's an acting job - acting natural.
Alistair Cooke
Image
Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.
Alistair Cooke
Image
I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better.
Alistair Cooke
Image
The best thing about Eisenhower's Presidency was his Jeffersonian conviction that there should be as little government and as much golf as possible.
Alistair Cooke
Image
I have an insane desire to shave a stroke or two off my handicap.
Alistair Cooke
Image
Canned music is like audible wallpaper.
Alistair Cooke
Image
Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.
Alistair Cooke
Image
People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.
Alistair Cooke
Image
As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later
Alistair Cooke
Image
The Masters is more like a vast Edwardian garden party than a golf tournament.
Alistair Cooke
Image
But afterall it's not the winning that matters, is it? Or is it? It'sto coinawordtheamenitiesthatcount: thesmell of the dandelions, the puff of the pipe, the click of the bat, the rain on the neck, the chill down the spine, the slow, exquisite coming on of sunset and dinner and rheumatism.
Alistair Cooke