Quotes about art and science

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“These principles [in art], forgotten over time, were rediscovered by a few geniuses such as Rembrandt, Vélazquez, Délacroix, Corot and Manet. These principles can be deduced from innate principles within us, ideas of harmony, common to all unspoiled men.... these are the laws of harmony and color.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

“What part should nature play in a work of art? Where should the line be drawn? And from the standpoint of practical procedure - should one work directly from nature or merely study and remember it? Too much freedom frightens me, poor imitator that I am, and yet my head is filled with so many images evoked by what I see around me at all times that nature seems insignificant and banal.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Quote from a letter to Maurice Dennis, 1889; as quoted by John Rewald in Pierre Bonnard; MoMA - distribution, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1918, p. 14 - note 7

“I respect personality; it is an abstract entitity. A certain number of lines and colors constituting a harmony, can be arranged infinite ways. The literary side in painting is a second element of personality; it may exist – it must exist – but only as a pretext; if it dominates, one fall into the realm of illustration. You see that I do not wish to legislate personality.”

Paul Sérusier (1864–1927) French painter

Source: from: 'A letter to Maurice Denis, p. 237

“Science and religion are not at odds. Science is simply too young to understand.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

“The darkness isn't afraid of coming close to me, my fear of loneliness draws him towards me. Darkness surrounds me and despair takes hold of me. I start to torment my loneliness, and my silence begins to take my life. When I call my happiness darkness always turns happiness way. Darkness is not afraid of me coming close to me, my fear pulls it to me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

“Chuang Tzu's wife died and Hui Tzu came to console him, but Chuang Tzu was sitting, legs akimbo, bashing a battered tub and singing. Hui Tzu said, 'You lived as man and wife, she reared your children. At her death surely the least you should be doing is to be on the verge of weeping, rather than banging the tub and singing: this is not right!' Chuang Tzu said, 'Certainly not. When she first died, I certainly mourned just like everyone else! However, I then thought back to her birth and to the very roots of her being, before she was born. Indeed, not just before she was born but before the time when her body was created. Not just before her body was created but before the origin of life's breath. Her life's breath wrought a transformation and she had a body. Her body wrought a transformation and she was born. Now there is yet another transformation and she is dead. She is like the four seasons in the way that spring, summer, autumn and winter follow each other. She is now at peace, lying in her chamber, but if I were to sob and cry it would certainly appear that I could not comprehend the ways of destiny. This is why I stopped.<nowiki/”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Ch. 18 (Martin Palmer/Elizabeth Breuily, Penguin Publishing 1996)

“My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“My fellow Americans, the city of Miami is only 200 miles or so from Havana. Countless thousands of Cubans have come to Miami -- on planes and makeshift rafts; some with little but the shirt on their back and hope in their hearts. Today, Miami is often referred to as the capital of Latin America. But it is also a profoundly American city -– a place that reminds us that ideals matter more than the color of our skin, or the circumstances of our birth; a demonstration of what the Cuban people can achieve, and the openness of the United States to our family to the South. Todos somos Americanos.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

“It is quite impossible these days to assume anything about people's educational level from the way they talk or dress or from their taste in music. Safest to treat everyone you meet as a distinguished intellectual.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“Premachnad was always man of the people, a man of the soil. He spoke for country’s poor, not just the poor of his native state. With his powerful pen, he painted picture after picture of rural India, its largely static societt, its caste clashes as well its communal harmony, its poverty and its exploitation, as well as richness of character of so many of its people.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

In page 10
THE PREMCHAND READER Selected Stories 1

“The Art of Peace begins with you.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

As quoted in Inspire! What Great Leaders Do (2004) by Lance Secretan, p. 45
Context: The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all than you encounter.

“If I feel a painting I'm working on doesn't have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957

“We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

E. J. Corey, ‎Barbara Czakó, ‎László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction

“Mozart didn't need a scheme for his music. He played and sang with the heavenly lightness of a child.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Mozart brauchte kein Programm für seine Musik. Er musizierte und sang mit der göttlichen Leichtigkeit eines Kindes.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

“The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

“All that I write whether poetry or music centred around God. This is an act of faith in me. Music is not worth its name otherwise.”

Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore

V. K. Subramanian (2013), in 101 Mystics of India, p. 181 http://books.google.co.in/books?id=_uswAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA181

“Some paintings become famous because, being durable, they are viewed by successive generations, in each of which are likely to be found a few appreciative eyes. I know a painting so evanescent that it is seldom viewed at all, except by some wandering deer. It is a river who wields the brush, and it is the same river who, before I can bring my friends to view his work, erases it forever.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“August: The Green Pasture”, p. 51.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "August: The Green Pasture," "September: The Choral Copse," "October: Smoky Gold," and "October: Red Lanterns"

“This song of the waters is audible to every ear, but there is other music in these hills, by no means audible to all. To hear even a few notes of it you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then on a still night, when the campfire is low and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 149.