“At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.”

“In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

“A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

“As poetry is a species of art, its essential principle must be a specific development of the principle essential to all art; and it will merely remain for us to determine what the specific addition is, which the peculiar conditions of the poet's art make to the principle of art in general.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

“Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“The dominant tradition in the sociology of art… defines art as something more special, in which creativity comes to the surface and the essential character if the society expresses itself, especially in the great work of the genius.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

“The art of reading consists in remembering the essentials and forgetting non essentials.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

“Great literature, past or present, is the expression of great knowledge of the human heart; great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within…”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer