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The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very pleasant little water color you have there.'

— Russell Lynes Snobs (1950)

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Art

More quotes by Russell Lynes

A lady is a woman who makes a man behave like a gentleman.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side. … After a long period of gazing (during which he may occasionally squint his eyes), he will approach to within a few inches of the picture and examine the brushwork; he will then return to his former distant position, give the picture another glance and walk away.

Snobs (1950)

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Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

José Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Russell Lynes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.