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  ...in their integrity, leaving the observer free to resurvey them from any point of view and drink in their quality exhaustively.
[Sidenote: Reproduction by acting ephemera.]
The movement and speech which are wanting, the stage may be called upon to supply; but it cannot supply them without a terrible sacrifice, for it cannot give permanence to it expression. Acting is for this reason an inferior art, not perhaps in difficulty and certainly not in effect, but inferior in dignity, since The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.   and this ideal is half frustrated if the representation is itself fleeting and the rendering has no firmer subsistence than the inspiration that gave it birth. By making himself, almost in his entirety, the medium of his art, the actor is morally diminished, and as little of him remains in his work, when this is good, as of his work in history. He lends himself without interest, and after being Brutus at one moment and Falstaff at another, he is not more truly himself. He is abolished by...   Santayana, George

Excerpt from The Life of Reason · This quote is about art · Search on Google Books to find all references and sources for this quotation.

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