Connoisseur Quotes

Though the clown is often deadpan, he is a connoisseur of laughter. ~ Mel Gussow

I feel like really thinking about art and really appreciating it and learning the language of it just makes you more of a connoisseur. I believe that. ~ David Rees

Only utopian liberals could be surprised that the Nazis were art connoisseurs. ~ Camille Paglia

In our hurried world too little value is attached to the part of the connoisseur and dilettante. ~ Edith Wharton

Women incorporate the values of the male sexual objectifiers within themselves. Catharine MacKinnon calls this being "thingified" in the head (MacKinnon, 1989). They learn to treat their own bodies as objects separate from themselves. Bartky explains how this works: the wolf whistle sexually objectifies a woman from without with the result that, ``"The body which only a moment before I inhabited with such ease now floods my consciousness. I have been made into an object' (Bartky, 1990, p. 27). She explains that it is not sufficient for a man simply to look at the woman secretly, he must make her aware of his looking with the whistle.

She must, "be made to know that I am a 'nice piece of ass': I must be made to see myself as they see me' (p. 27). The effect of such male policing behaviour is that, "Subject to the evaluating eye of the male connoisseur, women learn to evaluate themselves first and best'" (Bartky, 1990, p. 28).

Women thus become alienated from their own bodies. ~ Sheila Jeffreys

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself. Question: What is he? Answer: A sluggard; how very pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself! It would mean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was something to say about me. 'Sluggard' - why, it is a calling and vocation, it is a career. Do not jest, it is so. I should then be a member of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in continually respecting myself. I knew a gentleman who prided himself all his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte. He considered this as his positive virtue, and never doubted himself. He died, not simply with a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite right, too. Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should have been a sluggard and a gluteton, not a simple one, but, for instance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful. How do you like that? I have long had visions of it. That 'sublime and beautiful' weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty; then - oh, then it would have been different! I should have found for myself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking to the health of everything 'sublime and beautiful.' I should have s ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In the drawing room [of the Queen's palace] hung a Venus and Cupid by Michaelangelo, in which, instead of a bit of drapery, the painter has placed Cupid's foot between Venus's thighs. Queen Caroline asked General Guise, an old connoisseur, if it was not a very fine piece? He replied Madam, the painter was a fool, for he has placed the foot where the hand should be. ~ Horace Walpole

I'm very, very family oriented. I'm a big cook and a good connoisseur and I only drink very good red wines now. ~ Michael Caine

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself. ~ Pablo Picasso

But he was a connoisseur of the if-only, and so they did travel. They travelled in the past-conditional. ~ Julian Barnes

Dalinar Kholin was a connoisseur of death.
Even since his youth, the sight of dead men had been a familiar thing to him. You stay on the battlefield long enough, and you become familiar with its master. ~ Brandon Sanderson

One more salt to try," Kellan said, reaching into the box. He brought a jar of black, flaky crystals up to the light. "Black diamond finishing salt. Extremely rare and too bold for those with meek palates. But, for a true connoisseur, the flavor is incomparable." He lowered her head and torso to the ground and pushed her sweater up to expose her stomach and ribs. "I want to sample it on your skin. ~ Melissa Cutler

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque. ~ Susan Sontag

...If a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing [for Satan and his devils to do] is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits"him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the [Lord] desires... In the second place, the search for a "suitable" church makes the man a critic where the [Lord] wants him to be a pupil. ~ C.S. Lewis

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done. ~ Susan Orlean

I was a professor of penis, a connoisseur of cock, a devotee of dick, an epicure of erections. I had made it my life's work to worship the male member. And what a member this one was. ~ Michael Murphy

The more you become a connoisseur of gratitude, the less you are a victim of resentment, depression, and despair. Gratitude will act as an elixir that will gradually dissolve the hard shell of your ego-your need to posses and control-and transform you into a generous being. The sense of gratitude produces true spiritual alchemy, makes us magnanimous-lar ge souled. ~ Sam Keen

Venice is a cheek-by-jowl, back-of-the-hand, under-the-counter, higgledy-piggledy, anecdotal city, and she is rich in piquant wrinkled things, like an assortment of bric-a-brac in the house of a wayward connoisseur, or parasites on an oyster-shell. ~ Jan Morris

The real connoisseurs in art are those who make people accept as beautiful something everybody used to consider ugly, by revealing and resuscitating the beauty in it. ~ Jules De Goncourt

Harold had become, over the past week, a connoisseur of silences. He was an expert at differentiating the particulars; was this a Tranquil Silence, marked by slow sighs and peaceful smiles? Or was it a Tired Silence, marked by ornery chair shifting? Or a Tense Silence, full of tight breaths and cautious glances? ~ Graham Moore

Our human landscape is overburdened with competitions and contests. Art need not be a contest. Art is a personal quest for quality. Quality is the forerunner of acceptance. Character is the forerunner of quality. Be your own discriminating connoisseur. ~ Robert Genn

As long as one strives to become a gourmet or a connoisseur of wines because it is the "in" thing to do, striving to master an externally imposed challenge, then taste may easily turn sour. But a cultivated palate provides many opportunities for flow if one approaches eating - and cooking - in a spirit of adventure and curiosity, exploring the potentials of food for the sake of the experience rather than as a showcase for one's expertise. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that "suits" him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. ~ C.S. Lewis

Whereas an Otaku is a true connoisseur of the culture, showing the same reverence and respectful distance which any true expert
shows to their chosen field of expertise, the Weeaboo is like a socially awkward adolescent, ineptly trying to gain the social acceptance of Japanese people - because their unfortunate mental disorder has caused them to believe they are, in fact, Japanese. ~ Alexei Maxim Russell

I'm not really a food connoisseur. ~ Aasif Mandvi

I have a neighbor who knows 200 types of wine ... I only know two types of wine - red and white. But my neighbor only knows two types of countries - industrialized and developing. And I know 200. ~ Hans Rosling

He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism
all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life ... 'I have attained the age of reason. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The exposition of Atrocious Torture Instruments could not fail to appeal to a connoisseur of the worst in mankind. But the essence of the worst, the true asafoetida of the human spirit, is not found in the Iron Maiden or the whetted edge; Elemental Ugliness is found in the faces of the crowd. ~ Thomas Harris

Mick Jagger also a music connoisseur and knows everything about that era. So, you knew the music side was going to be top-notch. It's HBO. On Men of Certain Age, if we wanted a song, it would break the bank. But, Vinyl can go all-out. ~ Ray Romano

Connoisseur, n. A specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The modern world is drowning in information. We have more data than we can possibly use regarding nearly every picayune matter of society, economics, and politics. Science has contributed to this tsunami of facts and figures, but Riley's reports demonstrated that the tidal wave of minutiae is hardly unique to our time. In every age the challenge has been to move from information to knowledge. And the value of experts lies in their capacity to extract meaning from the reams of facts. Rather than being swamped by raw data, the connoisseur, craftsman, engineer, clinician, or scientist is selectively and self-consciously blind. Knowing what to ignore, recognizing what is extraneous, is the key to deriving pattern, form, and insight. ~ Jeffrey A. Lockwood

Wine came from grapes and grapes were fruit. If you were going to judge every wine connoisseur, you would also have to walk around the playground and slap the box of grape juice out of every child's chubby little hands as well. ~ Eric Dimbleby

If connoisseurship is the art of appreciation, criticism is the art of disclosure ... Connoisseurs simply need to appreciate what they encounter. Critics, however, must render these qualities vivid by the artful use of critical disclosure. ~ Elliot W. Eisner

Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move. ~ Roger Scruton

Cuban cigars are an acquired taste, like Scotch whisky. If you're not used to them, you'll get a headache, you'll find them much too strong. But to a cigar connoisseur, a longtime smoker, if you have a well-made, well-aged one, there is nothing like a Cuban cigar. Getting them is the ultimate mission; any cigar lover would do anything ~ Marvin Shanken

For something to become a work of art, a labeling process must take place that requires three participants: an artist who produces an apt object, a client or public, and a critic or connoisseur who mediates between the artist and the public to assure them of the artness of the thing. If I make a painting, it is not sufficient for the painting to be "art" that I consider it so, nor even that you, my friend and neighbor, admire it and hang it on your wall; it must be certified as art by competent authority and exhibited in the institutionally appropriate place, a gallery or museum. ~ Wyatt MacGaffey

I'm not a wine connoisseur, but I do like a glass or two at night. ~ Diane Keaton

Connoisseurs think the art is already done. ~ John Constable

Stories never told,
disappeared in the dawn mist
and sunset blaze.
Like a movie kiss,
not real,
but still overwhelms and entices lustfulness,
turns me into pleasure
and a connoisseur of love.

Flying to the heavens above
followed by the yearning hope
that you will always be close to me,
that you will not disperse when
we revel in​ one another.

Secrets to be kept in one of these terracotta walls
that fade away through the dusk,
feeling the scented candles of musk,
just you and I,
two rebels of love,
that challenge the logic, the meaning, ​and sense. ~ Tatjana Ostojic

She is the epitome of injustice, is my mistress. I never sulk, I am no glutton, and at that time I was barely thirty years of age, although to a fourteen-year-old anyone above twenty is an ancient, and I admit that, when it comes to food, I do have the refined tastes of a connoisseur. ~ Wilbur Smith

Children are the true connoisseurs. What's precious to them has no price, only value. ~ Bel Kaufman

Animals in zoos and prisoners sleep many hours a day. Like them I have become a devotee, a voluptuary of sleep, a connoisseur of its intense, uncharted pleasures. Sleep slips the chains of this life, snaps the intimate fetters of my skin, sets me free to travel the wild landscapes of the ungoverned mind. ~ Anna Lyndsey

I am a connoisseur of fine irony. 'Tis a bit like fine wine, but it has a better bite. ~ Lynn Kurland

Well, anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. ~ Janet Fitch

A connoisseur of gastronomy was congratulated on his appointment as a director of indirect contributions at Periguex: and, above all, in the pleasure there would be in living in the midst of good cheer, in the country of truffles, partridges, truffled turkeys, and so forth. "Alas!" replied with a sigh the sad gastronomer, "can one really live at all in a country where there is no fresh sea-fish?" ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone or simply to walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the whole community.
This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind where each dialect is not only heard but understood. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Your thin white face, chérie; he said, as if he saw it for the first time. Your thin white face, with its promise of debauchery only a connoisseur could detect. ~ Angela Carter

The difference between that man and me," Alan Mendelsohn said, "is that I am a connoisseur, and he is a fanatic. ~ Daniel Pinkwater

It is possible to enjoy the Mozart concerto without being able to play the clarinet. In fact, you can learn to be an expert connoisseur of music without being able to play a note on any instrument. Of course, music would come to a halt if nobody ever learned to play it. But if everybody grew up thinking that music was synonymous with playing it, think how relatively impoverished many lives would be. Couldn't we learn to think of science in the same way? ~ Richard Dawkins

Unless you are a born connoisseur of art, you will not be able to judge by yourself why certain art is superior to other art. ~ David Elliott

In the General History of Africa, we come across very impressive facts about the culture of primitive African peoples. It is known, for example, that in the old African kingdoms, all foreigners-whether white or colored- enjoyed hospitality and had the same rights as the native people. At the same time, a foreigner in ancient Rome or Greece usually became a slave. Such and similar facts have probably made Leo Frobenius, a well-known German ethnologist and a great connoisseur of Africa, write : The Africans are civilized up to their bones, and the idea of their being barbarians is a European fiction. ~ Alija Izetbegovic

The greatest masters have only made single statues, groups are always inferior; that is why Carpeaux, big though he was, is less so than Rodin, for he never knew how to make single statues. He did not know how to find his rhythm in the arrangement of the shapes of one body, but obtained it by the disposition of several. The great sculptors are there to prove it. Think of the masterpieces which we like most, all standing or seated, and one at a time, and they are not in the least monotonous. The connoisseur loves one spicy cake, but the glutton requires at least six to stimulate his pleasure. ~ H.S. Ede

Over the course of several articles, I will give you the tools to become a sentence connoisseur as well as a sentence artisan. Each of my lessons will give you the insight to appreciate fine sentences and the vocabulary to talk about them. ~ Constance Hale

Since I've been pregnant, I've lost my taste for fast food. I used to be the biggest McDonald's junkie and now I don't like it anymore. I used to be the biggest fast-food connoisseur, and now I've really lost my taste for it. ~ Holly Madison

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. ~ Laren Grey Umphlett

Just - let me hold you. That's all. Hold you and go to sleep." He smoothed his thumbs over the back of her hands. "You can tell me everything about tableware."
She was silent a moment, gazing down at their hands. Then she said, "Would you like to know about holloware or flatware?"
"Flatware. Naturally, flatware."
"I shall certainly put you to sleep with that. I venture to say you'll be snoring by the time I get to the runcible spoon."
"My God. Do I snore?"
"You were decidedly snoring last night, as I was enlightening you upon the nature and arrangement of sideboards. I'm rather a connoisseur of sideboards, but I suppose not everyone enters into my own enthusiasm. Kindly refrain from swearing, if you please."
"I beg your pardon." He kissed her nose... ~ Laura Kinsale

Perhaps," you will add, grinning, "those who have never been slapped will also not understand" - thereby politely hinting that I, too, may have experienced a slap in my life, and am therefore speaking as a connoisseur. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Picasso said once when being interviewed that one should not be one's own connoisseur. ~ Kenneth Koch

There's more than one thing I can't do and there are a lot more things than that that you can't do or you wouldn't be in the newspaper business. You'd be a jockey and a scholar and a connoisseur of femininity like I am ~ Laura Hillenbrand

He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. ~ Jane Austen

I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish. ~ Julia Glass

I'm a bit of a connoisseur of Google criticism. ~ Matt Cutts

Agatha was a connoisseur of headaches, and was relieved at the transitory nature of this one. ~ Phil Foglio

Most ordinary mortals, mistake money or visualize money in its physical form - as coins or currency. Thus they begin counting it, hoarding it and hiding it behind faceless numbers and faceless vaults in anonymous places all over the world. They value money for its form or the form of the acquisitions it is able to have - properties, jewellery, clothes, food etc. But the real connoisseur of money knows that its true value is elsewhere. It's in the simple though propitious word, 'influence'. ~ Vinod Pande

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Speaking of food, English cuisine has received a lot of unfair criticism over the years, but the truth is that it can be a very pleasant surprise to the connoisseur of severely overcooked livestock organs served in lukewarm puddles of congealed grease. England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria. ~ Dave Barry

I became a connoisseur of that nasty thud a manuscript makes when it comes through the letter box. ~ James Herriot

She was tipping her head back to inquire, when two men entered the great hall and the question flew right out of her head.
They were simply two of the most gorgeous men she'd ever seen. Twins, though different. They were both tall and powerfully built. One was taller by a few inches, with dark hair that swept just past his shoulders and eyes like shard of silver and ice while the other had long black hair falling in a single braid to his waist, and eyes as gold as Adam's torque. They were elegantly dressed in tailored clothing of dark hues, with magnificent bodies that dripped with raw sex appeal.
Oh, my, she marveled, they don't amek men like these in the States. Were these typical Scotsmen? If so, she was going to have to get Elizabeth over here somehow. A connoisseur of romance novels, Elizabeth's favorites were the Scottish ones, and these two men looked as if they'd just stepped straight off one of those covers.
"Try not to gape, ka-lyrra. They're only human. Mortal. Puny. And married. Both of them. Happily. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Anything can be art: painting stairs, raising a child, or organising a trip to the end of the world. It's the way you live that makes you either an artist, or an art connoisseur, or an unsatisfied critic. ~ Mykyta Isagulov

It was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard. "This is a handy cove," says he at length; "and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?" My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity. "Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me. Here you, matey," he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Fragrance for me is never after or only, it's everything. I am a fragrance connoisseur. ~ Erin Heatherton

The latter. She had a good run, Sook said, doing a little shrug. It was his usual response to death at Mapleshade, and it was a safe bet that he felt that way about himself. Like most twice-widowed, Korea-vet, nature-loving, gun-enthusiast, bilingual, weed-connoisseur great grandfathers of five, he'd lived a full life. ~ Lisa Lutz

Existentialist literature provides a more satisfactory account of the persistence of feminine narcissism. Simone de Beauvoir makes use of the existentialist conception of 'situation' in order to account for the persistence of narcissism in the feminine personality. A woman's situation, i.e., those meanings derived from the total context in which she comes to maturity, disposes her to apprehend her body not as the instrument of her transcendence, but as 'an object destined for another.'

Knowing that she is to be subjected to the cold appraisal of the male connoisseur and that her life prospects may depend on how she is seen, a woman learns to appraise herself first. The sexual objectification of women produces a duality in feminine consciousness. The gaze of the Other is internalized so that I myself become at once seer and seen, appraiser and the thing appraised. ~ Sandra Lee Bartky

It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Although women participate in literary social life from the very beginning, they are not the centre of the courtly salons of the Renaissance; and later on, the age of the middle-class salon, they become the centre in quite a different sense than in the age of chivalry. Incidentally, the cultural importance of women is only another expression of the rationalism of the Renaissance. They are regarded as the intellectuals equals of men, but not as their superiors. "Everything that men can understand, can also be understood by women," to quote from the Cortegiano; but the gallantry which Castiglione demands of the courtier has no longer much in common with the woman-worship of the knights. The Renaissance is a masculine age; women like Lucrezia Borgia, who kept court in Nepi, or even Isabella dEste, who was the centre fo the court in Ferrara and Mantua and who not only had a stimulating influence on the poets of her entourage but also seems to have been a connoisseur of the plastic arts, are exceptions. Nearly everywhere the leading patrons and friends of art are men. ~ Arnold Hauser

All the time he had been talking his hands had wandered over the Illustrations, as if to adjust their frames, to brush away dust- the motions of a connoisseur, an art patron. ~ Ray Bradbury