“Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.”

Last update March 20, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life." by Thomas Mann?

Thomas Mann159

German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875–1955

Related quotes

“I define the Soul as that which individualises the Universal Spirit, which focuses the Universal Light into a single point; which is, as it were, a receptacle into which is poured the Spirit; so that that which in Itself is universal, poured into this receptacle appears as separate, identical in its essence always but separated now in its manifestation; the purpose of this separation being that an individual may develop and grow; that there may be an individualised life potent on every plane in the Universe; that it may know on the physical and on the psychical planes as it knows on the spiritual, and have no break in consciousness of any kind; that it may make for itself the vehicles that it needs for acquiring consciousness beyond its own plane, and then may gradually purify them one by one until they no longer act as blinds or as hindrances, but as pure and translucent media through which all knowledge on every plane may come.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court (1895)

“It seems to me that art is a great miracle-it is the showing forth of the Holy Spirit transubstantiation. It is to find and proclaim the poetry of life, without which there is no life.”

Jim Ede (1895–1990) art collector

Introduction,In Engrave Glass:David Peace,Cambridge 1973.

“Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote of Denis, 1909: from Bouillon 2006, pp. 17-18; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [9] <br class="br">1890 - 1920

“Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape…. For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

“O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life!
Guide thou my hand which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 5, lines 21-23 The Words of Blake

“Life is experienced holistically with sensations pouring in through every physical and mental organ of perception. Art exists embodied in physical elements—especially meticulously calibrated aspects of sight and sound—which scholarly explication can illuminate but never fully replace. However conceptually incoherent and subjectively emotional, the amateur response to poetry comes closer to the larger human purposes of the art—which is to awaken, amplify, and refine the sense of being alive—than does critical commentary”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

19
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

“The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

“The time of the often criticized art without real subject [l'art pour l'art] and the art without object [ Abstract art ] seems to be over. We are experiencing a new return to the meaningful subject, which the common people can understand”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1980's

“She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Birthmark" from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

“Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Preface, p. 7-8
Context: Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit by which Nature herself is animated. It is the joy of the intellect which sees clearly into the Universe and which recreates it, with conscientious vision. Art is the most sublime mission of man, since it is the expression of thought seeking to understand the world and to make it understood.

“Art is the funnel, as it were, through which spirit is poured into life.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Thomas Mann159

Related quotes

Related topics