“Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

—  Aldous Huxley, book Antic Hay

Source: Antic Hay

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What i…" by Aldous Huxley?
Aldous Huxley photo
Aldous Huxley290
English writer 1894–1963

Related quotes

Gay Talese photo

“He seemed now to be also the embodiment of the fully emancipated male, perhaps the only one in America, the man who can do anything he wants, anything, can do it because he has money, the energy, and no apparent guilt. … The man who had everything, lost it, then got it back, letting nothing stand in his way, doing what few men can do.”

Gay Talese Frank Sinatra Has a Cold

Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (Esquire, April 1966)

“Be happy with who you are and what you do, and you can do anything you want.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 101

Federico Fellini photo

“I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Artistic Freedom"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)
Context: I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.

Robert M. Pirsig photo

“Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

NPR Interview http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4612364 with Pirsig (1974)

Kate Bush photo

“As an artist, you’re never happy with anything you do. It’s part of the process.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

As quoted in &quot;In conversation with Kate Bush&quot; by Elio Iannacci in MacLeans (28 November 2016) https://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/in-conversation-with-kate-bush/ <br class="br">Context: As an artist, you’re never happy with anything you do. It’s part of the process. You’re never really happy. I’m certainly not. That’s a good thing. It means you’re always striving to do better. You hope the next piece will be better.

Alfred Clifton Hughes photo

“Fear of suffering is a great obstacle to being a happy person in life. God wants us to be happy. Asceticism is not supposed to make us sad. It’s supposed to free us to be able to understand and do what God wants. He wants our happiness. He wants us to bring happiness to others.”

Alfred Clifton Hughes (1932) Roman Catholic archbishop

Source: 60 Years A Priest: An Interview with Archbishop Alfred Hughes https://nds.edu/blog-entry/60-years-a-priest-an-interview-with-archbishop-alfred-hughes/

Richard Wright photo

“If laying down my life could stop the suffering in the world I'd do it. But I don't believe anything can stop it,' I told him. He heard me but he did not speak. I wanted to say more to him, but I knew that it would have been useless. Though older than I, he had neither known nor felt anything of life for himself; he had been carefully reared by his mother and father and he had always been told what to feel.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Bob Dylan photo

“Ron Rosenbaum: Why are you doing what you're doing?
Bob Dylan: [Pause] Because I don't know anything else to do. I'm good at it.
Ron Rosenbaum: How would you describe "it"?
Bob Dylan: I'm an artist. I try to create art.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Playboy Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/play78.htm (1978)

“Compare the saint who, asked what he would do if he had only an hour to live, replied that he would go on with his game of chess, since it was as much worship as anything else he had ever done.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“These Are Not Psalms”, p. 124
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Isaac Asimov photo

“The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Roving Mind (1983), Ch. 25
Context: How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

Related topics