Quotes about art

A collection of quotes on the topic of dance, art, work, working.

Best quotes about art

„The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.“

— Mark Twain American author and humorist 1835 - 1910

Variant of this quote "The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up." is misattributed to Albert Einstein.
Source: According Quote Investigator Mark Twain did write a version of this saying in a personal notebook in 1896, and it was published by 1935 in “Mark Twain’s Notebook”. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/21/cheer-somebody/

„Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.“

— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

„Thank you for the tragedy. I need it for my art.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

„Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted.“

— Emily Dickinson, book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Variant: Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

„Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it.“

— Bertolt Brecht German poet, playwright, theatre director 1898 - 1956

Mistakenly attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky in The Political Psyche (1993) by Andrew Samuels, p. 9; mistakenly attributed to Brecht in Paulo Freire: A Critical Encounter (1993) by Peter McLaren and Peter Leonard, p. 80; variant translation: "Art is not a mirror held up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."
First recorded in Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924; edited by William Keach (2005), Ch. 4: Futurism, p. 120): "Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes."
Disputed

„A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.“

— Salvador Dalí Spanish artist 1904 - 1989

„To "catch" a husband is an art; to "hold" him is a job.“

— Simone de Beauvoir, book The Second Sex

Bk. 2, part 5, Ch. 1: The Married Woman, p. 468
Source: The Second Sex (1949)

„Art is what you can get away with.“

— Andy Warhol American artist 1928 - 1987

„Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.“

— Stephen King American author 1947

„The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.“

— Emile Zola French writer (1840-1902) 1840 - 1902

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing‎ (2006) by Larry Chang , p. 55.

All quotes about art

Total 5828 quotes art, filter:

„The noblest art is that of making others happy“

— P.T. Barnum American showman and businessman 1810 - 1891

Happiness

„Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them.“

— Andrzej Majewski Polish writer and photographer 1966

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

People

„Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.“

— Claude Monet French impressionist painter 1840 - 1926

Love, Understanding

„Art is to console those who are broken by life.“

— Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890

Life

„Struck intensely tonight by the thought that we live in a great age. We can make music, food, pictures, art, & love with unbelievable unprecedented freedom. It's all there, there for the taking & the making, all the time.“

— Tom Hiddleston English actor, producer and musical performer 1981

Love, Age, Food, Music

„Everyone should consider his
body as a priceless gift from
one whom he loves above all, a
marvelous work of art, of
indescribable beauty, and
mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that
a word, a breath, a look, nay, a
thought may injure it.“

— Nikola Tesla Serbian American inventor 1856 - 1943

Love, Beauty

„If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?“

— Ai Weiwei Chinese concept artist 1957

Pain, People

„Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.“

— Daisaku Ikeda Japanese writer 1928

Life, Pain, Flowers

„Be true to yourself.
Make each day your masterpiece.
Help others.
Drink deeply from good books.
Make friendship a fine art.
Build a shelter against a rainy day.
Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.“

— John Wooden American basketball coach 1910 - 2010

Friendship, Books, Drink, Help

„Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.“

— Aleister Crowley poet, mountaineer, occultist 1875 - 1947

Introduction.
Source: Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.
(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magical weapons", pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations" — these sentences — in the "magical language" ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits", such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)
In one sense Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.

Science, Change

„Art is a big question mark.“

— Marilyn Manson American rock musician and actor 1969

Question

„Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.“

— Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

„I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.“

— Jean-Michel Basquiat American artist 1960 - 1988

„Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.“

— Frédéric Chopin Polish composer 1810 - 1849

As quoted in If Not God, Then What?
Source: If Not God, Then What? (2007) by Joshua Fost, p. 93

„The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.“

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Truth, World

„I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.“

— Marcel Duchamp French painter and sculptor 1887 - 1968

„I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

As quoted in Melody Maker (1991-09-14).
Interviews (1989-1994), Print

Music, Guy, Fight

„Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.“

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

Life, Children, Education, Cute

„Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.“

— Andrei Tarkovsky Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director 1932 - 1986

World, Perfection

„Observation is a dying art.“

— Stanley Kubrick American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor 1928 - 1999

Source: Stanley Kubrick: Interviews

„Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art.“

— Kurt Cobain American musician and artist 1967 - 1994

Date unknown, but appears on Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!.
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

People, Music, Way, Thinking

„The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter — it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.“

— Morihei Ueshiba founder of aikido 1883 - 1969

Speaking of a vision of the "Great Spirit of Peace" in 1942, during World War II, as quoted in Adjusting Though Reflex : Romancing Zen (2010) by Rodger Hyodo, p. 76
Context: The Way of the Warrior has been misunderstood. It is not a means to kill and destroy others. Those who seek to compete and better one another are making a terrible mistake. To smash, injure, or destroy is the worst thing a human being can do. The real Way of a Warrior is to prevent such slaughter — it is the Art of Peace, the power of love.

Love, Peace, Way

„The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair.“

— Paracelsus Swiss physician and alchemist 1493 - 1541

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

Heart

„There is no art more akin to mysticism than architecture. Abstract, geometrical, musical and yet dumb, passionless, it depends entirely upon symbolism, form and suggestion. Simple lies, and the harmonious combination and numerical relations between these, present something mysterious and at the same time incomplete.“

— Alexander Herzen, book My Past and Thoughts

My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

Time, Dependency, Music, Relation ships

„Photography is not only an art, it is an international language that everybody understands.“

— NasserTone Nasser Ali Albahrani is a director, cinematographer, photographer, producer, & YouTuber, who was born on April 3, 1994,… 1994

Amasi Program, Sharjah TV Interview (March 1, 2016)

Understanding

„The mother of all the skills is to learn the art of paying attention—Remembering every step you make or anything that’s around you.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Learning

„What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.“

— Helen Keller American author and political activist 1880 - 1968

Love, Parting, Goodbye

„Normal people do not create art.“

— Irving Stone, book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

People

„The sole substitute for an experience we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.“

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Russian writer 1918 - 2008

Literature

„Any great work of art … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world — the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.“

— Leonard Bernstein American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist 1918 - 1990

"What Makes Opera Grand?", Vogue (December 1958)

World, Time, Success

„Take your broken heart, make it into art.“

— Carrie Fisher American actress, screenwriter and novelist 1956 - 2016

Heart

„To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.“

— Fernando Pessoa, book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Music, Way, Feeling

„Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.“

— John W. Gardner American politician 1912 - 2002

Quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269.

Life, Drawing, Wise

„… and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?“

— Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890

Nature

„Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.“

— Egon Schiele austrian painter 1890 - 1918

„I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.“

— Marilyn Manson American rock musician and actor 1969

Variant: I think art is the only thing that's spirtual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.

God, People, World, Thinking

„Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important
just to look.“

— Marina Abramović Yugoslav-American artist 1946

Bird, Singing, Painting

„The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.“

— William James American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist 1842 - 1910

Source: 1890s, The Principles of Psychology (1890), Ch. 22

Wise

„Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.“

— Arundhati Roy Indian novelist, essayist 1961

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk

Music, Literature, Joy

„The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation.“

— Keith Haring American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing… 1958 - 1990

Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation

Way, Imagination, Reality

„Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!“

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, book Ode to the West Wind

St. I
Ode to the West Wind (1819)

„In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.“

— Pauline Kael American film critic 1919 - 2001

Newsweek (1973-12-24).

„Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!“

— Georges Bizet French composer 1838 - 1875

Starement of 3 August 1867, as quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 115

Beauty, Music

„The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery.“

— Ludwig Van Beethoven German Romantic composer 1770 - 1827

Conversations (March 1820)

World, Selfishness

„But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.“

— Erwin Rommel German field marshal of World War II 1891 - 1944

Ch XVI : The Great Retreat, p. 347.
The Rommel Papers (1953)

Stupidity, Courage

„Love — thou art Veiled —
A few — behold thee —
Smile — and alter — and prattle — and die —
Bliss — were an Oddity — without thee —
Nicknamed by God —
Eternity“

— Emily Dickinson, Love — thou art high —

453: Love — thou art high —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

Love, God, Smile

„Our educational system is filled with the art of memorisation, how much you can recall in the exams hall, and nothing to do with the testing of our intelligence.“

— Mwanandeke Kindembo 1996

Intelligence, Education

„The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.“

— Dorothy Nevill British gardener 1826 - 1913

Time

„Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist“

— René Magritte Belgian surrealist artist 1898 - 1967

World

„Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.“

— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

L'art n'est pas chaste [...], on devrait l’interdire aux ignorants innocents, ne jamais mettre en contact avec lui ceux qui y sont insuffisamment préparés. Oui, l'art est dangereux. Ou s'il est chaste, ce n'est pas de l'art.
Quote by Antonina Vallentin (1963 [1957]), Picasso, p. 168.
1960s

„Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.“

— Groucho Marx American comedian 1890 - 1977

Apparently attributed to Marx in Bennett Cerf's Try and Stop Me, first published in 1944. A citation of this can been seen in the Kentucky New Era on November 9, 1964 http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=X-orAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZWcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=4581,3323702&dq=art-of-looking-for-trouble&hl=en. Also attributed to Marx by Rand Paul in "The Long Stand," ch. 1 of Taking a Stand: Moving Beyond Partisan Politics to Unite America (New York, N. Y.: Center Street, 26 May 2015), p. 5.
The original quotation belongs to Sir Ernest Benn (Henry Powell Spring, What is Truth?, Orange Press, 1944, p. 31 https://books.google.com/books?id=snxbAAAAMAAJ&q=Ernest+benn+%22Politics+is+the+art+of%22&dq=Ernest+benn+%22Politics+is+the+art+of%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAjgUahUKEwiK3Zm-qojIAhWGVZIKHdFYBqY); a first known citation reportedly appears in the Springfield (MA) Republican on July 27, 1930.
Misattributed
Variant: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Source: Gyles Brandreth, Word Play: A cornucopia of puns, anagrams and other contortions and curiosities of the English language, Coronet, 2015.

Funny

„Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss.“

— John Milton, book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

„Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.“

— Sylvia Plath, Ariel

"Lady Lazarus" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/lady.html
Source: Ariel (1965)

Feeling, Hell

„Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.“

— Claude Debussy French composer 1862 - 1918

As quoted in Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (1992) by John Paynter, p. 590
Unsourced variant: Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

„Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.“

— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

La peinture n'est pas faite pour décorer des appartements. C'est un instrument de guerre offensive et défensive contre l'ennemi.
La pintura no se ha inventado para adornar las habitaciones. La pintura es un arma ofensiva, en la defensa contra el enemigo.
Les lettres françaises (1943-03-24).
Quotes, 1940's

„We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.“

— Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer 1881 - 1973

World, Painting

„The art is eternal, their shapes are changing.“

— Rudolf Steiner Austrian esotericist 1861 - 1925

Change

„Wild roses are fairest, and nature a better gardener than art.“

— Louisa May Alcott, A Long Fatal Love Chase

Source: A Long Fatal Love Chase

Nature

„J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…“

— J.M.W. Turner British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker 1775 - 1851

Source: J.M.W. Turner

Secret, Dreams, Hope, Way

„Love me sweet
With all thou art
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the Lightest part,
Love me in full Being.“

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning English poet, author 1806 - 1861

Love, Feeling, Thinking, Parting

„The truth of art lies in its power to break the monopoly of established reality to define what is real.“

— Herbert Marcuse German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist 1898 - 1979

Truth, Reality

„Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.“

— Thomas Hobbes English philosopher, born 1588 1588 - 1679

Life, Death, Men, War

„Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.“

— Peter Singer, book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Beauty, Way, Feeling

„The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.“

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti American artist, writer and activist 1919

Communication, Failure, Painting

„Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.“

— Paul Rand American graphic designer 1914 - 1996

„To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.“

— Elliott Erwitt American photographer 1928

Way

„I'm nothing,
I'll always be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.“

— Fernando Pessoa Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher 1888 - 1935

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Tabacaria ["The Tobacconist's" or "The Tobacco Shop"] (15 January 1928)
Variant translations:
I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot will to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
trans. Jonathan Griffin, in Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1974), p. 111
I am not nothing.
I will never be nothing.
I cannot ever want to be nothing.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
In Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 649
I am nothing.
I shall never be anything.
I cannot even wish to be anything.
Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Variant: I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

World, Dreams

„Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.“

— Alexis De Tocqueville, book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America

Freedom, Learning

„If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?“

— Zeno of Citium ancient Greek philosopher -334 - -263 BC

As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.

Music, Way, Birth, Knowledge

„Sometimes, of course, art creates the suffering in the first place.“

— Elfriede Jelinek, book The Piano Teacher

P 23
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Suffering

„Films are an art form which are sold after packaging in this commercial world.“

— Shahrukh Khan Indian actor, producer and television personality 1965

From interview with Komal Nahta

World

„Traditionally, art has been for the select few. We have been brainwashed to believe that Michaelangelo had to pat you on the head at birth. Well, we show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about.“

— Bob Ross American painter, art instructor, and television host 1942 - 1995

Linda Shrieves (July 7, 1990) "Bob Ross Uses His Brush to Spread Paint and Joy", The Orlando Sentinel, p. E1.

People, Home, Birth, Painting

„But then I ask myself, I have never truly known the man whose flank I have led one difficult and ascetic life for. Perhaps he has played with my idealism, taking advantage for dark scopes that he has held hidden within himself. How can I expect to know a man who has never opened his heart to me? Till now, I do not know what he really thought, knew or wanted. I was alone with my thoughts and my suspicions. And now, the veil that covered this statue has fallen to the ground and instead of an art work, a monster has revealed itself. Now we leave to the historians of the future the task of discussing if that statue was therefore a sin from the beginning, or was changed because of the circumstances. I continue to make the same error: I try to think back to his humble origins. But then I remember how many sons of these people have sealed their history with his name.“

— Alfred Jodl German general 1890 - 1946

About Hitler, Nuremberg Trial, March 10, 1946. Quoted in "Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader" by Percy Ernst Schramm.

Life, People, Error, History

„Tool is not Slayer. I went to art school. I spent three years in the military. There's more to me than throwing devil horns.“

— Maynard James Keenan musician 1964

Aidin Vaziri (January 2, 2009) "Maynard James Keenan: Hard rocker, winemaker. 5 Questions.", San Francisco Chronicle, p. E3.

School

„I have a high art: I hurt with cruelty those who wound me.“

— Archilochus Ancient Greek lyric poet -680 - -645 BC

As quoted in Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Vol. 20 (2001), p. 184
As quoted in Quotations for Martial Artists : Hundreds of Inspirational Quotes to Motivate and Enlighten the Modern Warrior (2003) edited by John D. Moore
Fragments
Variant: I have a high art; I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me.

Hurt

„In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.“

— Yi-Fu Tuan Chinese-American geographer 1930

Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, ch. 10 (1993).

Life, Mood, Summer, Painting

„The art system operates on its own terms, but an observer of art can choose many different distinctions to indicate what he observes.“

— Niklas Luhmann German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist 1927 - 1998

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 102.

„I wish that every young man when he begins to write music would not concern himself with being a melodist, a harmonist, a realist, an idealist or a futurist or any other such devilish pedantic things. Melody and harmony should be simply tools in the hands of the artist, with which he creates music; and if a day comes when people stop talking about the German school, the Italian school, the past, the future, etc., etc., then art will perhaps come into its own.“

— Giuseppe Verdi Italian composer 1813 - 1901

Io…vorrei che il giovane quando si mette a scrivere, non pensasse mai ad essere né melodista, né realista, né idealista, né avvenirista, né tutti i diavoli che si portino queste pedanterie. La melodia e l’armonia non devono essere che mezzi nella mano dell'artista per fare della Musica, e se verrà un giorno in cui non si parlerà più né di melodia né di armonia né di scuole tedesche, italiane, né di passato né di avvenire ecc. ecc. ecc. allora forse comincierà il regno dell'arte.
Letter to Opprandino Arrivabene, July 14, 1875, cited from Julian Budden Le opere di Verdi (Torino: E.D.T., 1986) vol. 2, p. 60; translation from Josiah Fisk and Jeff Nichols (eds.) Composers on Music (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997) p. 126

People, School, Music, Past

„A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture — in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.“

— Andrea Dworkin Feminist writer 1946 - 2005

Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).

Life, People, Literature, Thinking

„Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.“

— Charlie Parker American jazz saxophonist and composer 1920 - 1955

As quoted in Bird : The Legend Of Charlie Parker (1977) by Robert George Reisner, p. 27

Wisdom, Music

„Then indeed, pierced by grief's bitterest pang, she clutched the hand of Jason and humbly besought him thus: "Remember me, I pray, for never, believe me, shall I be forgetful of thee. When thou art gone, tell me, I beg, on what quarter of the heaven must I gaze?"“
Tum vero extremo percussa dolore arripit Aesoniden dextra ac summissa profatur: 'sis memor, oro, mei, contra memor ipsa manebo, crede, tui. quantum hinc aberis, dic quaeso, profundi? quod caeli spectabo latus?

— Gaius Valerius Flaccus, book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VII, Lines 475–479

Forgetting

„When I was in school, martial arts made you a dork, and I became self-conscious that I was too masculine. I was a 16-year-old girl with ringworm and cauliflower ears. People made fun of my arms and called me "Miss Man." It wasn't until I got older that I realized: These people are idiots. I'm fabulous.“

— Ronda Rousey American judoka, mixed martial artist, professional wrestler and actress 1987

"6 Feminist Quotes From Ronda Rousey That Prove She's More Than Just A Trash Talker", in Bustle.com (3 August 2015) http://www.bustle.com/articles/101566-6-feminist-quotes-from-ronda-rousey-that-prove-shes-more-than-just-a-trash-talker

People, School, Girl

„Dismissing poetry is dismissing the glory of the imagination. Teaching English to adolescents for twenty years gives me the authority to say, "Kill the imagination and you kill the soul. Kill the soul and you're left with a listless, apathetic creature who can become hopeless or brutal or both. Kill the metaphor and you kill desire; the image magnetizes the movement of the energy." I will make this clear as I speak. The tax money that is being withdrawn from arts programs in schools will be spent on prisons.“

— Marion Woodman Canadian writer 1928 - 2018

Source: Bone: Dying into Life (2000), p. 165

Money, School, Soul, Imagination

„This first stage of the life of the whole race is savagery, raw nature:… a condition in which man enjoys the most exquisite goods, equality and freedom, in full abundance, and would also enjoy them forever, if he would follow the hint of nature and understand the art of not abusing his powers and preventing the outbreak of his excessive passions.“

— Adam Weishaupt German philosopher and founder of the Order of Illuminati 1748 - 1830

Die neuesten Arbeiten des Spartacus und Philo in dem Illuminaten-Orden (1794) pp. 20-21.

Life, Understanding, Nature, Freedom

„While the others had got married and moved out to suburbia, I had stayed in London and got into the arts scene through friends like Robert Fraser and Barry Miles and papers like The International Times. We opened the Indica gallery with John Dunbar, Peter Asher and people like that. I heard about people like John Cage, and that he’d just performed a piece of music called 4’33” (which is completely silent) during which if someone in the audience coughed he would say, ‘See?’ Or someone would boo and he’d say, ‘See? It’s not silence—it’s music.’ I was intrigued by all of that. So these things started to be part of my life. I was listening to Stockhausen; one piece was all little plink-plonks and interesting ideas. Perhaps our audience wouldn’t mind a bit of change, we thought, and anyway, tough if they do! We only ever followed our own noses—most of the time, anyway. ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was one example of developing an idea.“

— Paul McCartney English singer-songwriter and composer 1942

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 212

Life, People, Music, Idea

„Concept art is first of all an art of which the material is concepts, as the material of e. g. music is sound. Since concepts are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language.“

— Henry Flynt American musician 1940

Henry Flynt: "Essay: Concept Art." (1961) In: La Monte Young (ed.) An Anthology, 1963.

Music

„Administration, which calls for the application of wide knowledge and many personal qualities, is above all the art of handling men, and in this art, as in many others, it is practice that makes perfect. This is one of the reasons why we should release our future engineers for practical work as early as possible; there are many drawbacks to staying too long at school.“

— Henri Fayol Developer of Fayolism 1841 - 1925

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

Men, School, Knowledge, Future

„If we let fashion, love of innovation, and an alleged scientific spirit tempt us to surrender the native quality of our own art, the free natural certainty of our work and perception, our bright golden light, then we are simply being stupid and senseless.“

— Giuseppe Verdi Italian composer 1813 - 1901

Si rinunci per moda, per smania di novità, per affettazione di scienza, si rinneghi l'arte nostra, il nostro istinto, quel nostro fare sicuro spontaneo naturale sensibile abbagliante di luce, è assurdo e stupido.
Letter to Clarina Maffei, April 20, 1878, cited from Franco Abbiati Giuseppe Verdi (Milano: Ricordi, 1959) vol. 4, p. 79; translation from Franz Werfel and Paul Stefan (eds.), Edward Downes (trans.) Verdi: The Man in His Letters (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1942) p. 345.

Love, Stupidity, Fashion, Nature

„Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm…. The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battle-field. We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the Infantry.“

— Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell senior officer of the British Army 1883 - 1950

In Praise of Infantry, The London Times, Thursday, 19 April 1945.

Men, War, Intelligence, Suffering

„[Do you have a motto or creed that as an artist you live by? ] Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will — through work — bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great "art idea". And the belief that process, in a sense, is liberating and that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today, you know what you'll do, you could be doing what you were doing yesterday, and tomorrow you are gonna do what you did today, and at least for a certain period of time you can just work. If you hang in there, you will get somewhere.“

— Chuck Close American artist 1940

Inside the Painter's Studio, Joe Fig, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009, p. 42

Idea, Sense, Time

„I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.“

— Marcel Duchamp French painter and sculptor 1887 - 1968

Quote from 'Time Magazine', 10 March 1952; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
1951 - 1968

Beauty

„Since I think just in pictures it's sort of hard to think about abstract concepts so I have to have visual images like for example when I was a child I didn't really understand some of the stuff in the Lord's Prayer and y'know when it talks about "the power and the glory"… and I thought "electrical high tension lines, circular rainbow." "Thou art in Heaven"; that didn't make any sense to me but another autistic person says "Well I always pictured God up in Heaven with an easel."“

— Temple Grandin USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist 1947

First Person (TV series) Episode 1 "Stairway to Heaven" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Person_(TV_series)#Season_1

God, Understanding, Thinking, Sense

„Pornography is art, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant. Its glut and glitter are a Babylonian excess.“

— Camille Paglia American writer 1947

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 67
Context: Pornography is art, sometimes harmonious, sometimes dissonant. Its glut and glitter are a Babylonian excess. Modern middle-class women cannot bear the thought that their hard-won professional achievements can be outweighed in an instant by a young hussy flashing a little tits and ass. But the gods have given her power, and we must welcome it. Pornography forces a radical reassessment of sexual value, nature’s bequest of our tarnished treasure.

„Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war.“

— Carl von Clausewitz, book On War

Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 1.
Context: Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat the enemy without too much bloodshed, and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed: War is such a dangerous business that mistakes that come from kindness are the very worst.

War, People, Way, Imagination

„We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.“

— Konrad Adenauer German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician (CDU) 1876 - 1967

Reader's Digest 1972, p. 194 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=ctsnAQAAIAAJ&q=adenauer

„Art is a substitute for violence.“

— Rollo May US psychiatrist 1909 - 1994

Source: Power and Innocence (1972), Ch. 11 : The Humanity of the Rebel
Context: Art is a substitute for violence. The same impulses that drive persons to violence — the hunger for meaning, the need for ecstasy, the impulse to risk all — drive the artist to create. He is by nature our archrebel. … the essence of the rebellion is in the new way of seeing nature and life.

„Art is about trying to find the good in people and making the world a more compassionate place.“

— Keanu Reeves Canadian actor, director, producer and musician 1964

World, Making love, People

„There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.“

— Helen Frankenthaler American artist 1928 - 2011

„Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?“

— Steve Jobs American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc. 1955 - 2011

A comment he made in persuading John Sculley to become Apple's CEO, as quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple: A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987) by John Sculley and John A. Byrne
1980s

Life, World, Water, Change

„I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.“

— Vladimir Nabokov, book Lolita

Source: I'm thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art, And this is the only immortality that you and I may share, my Lolita.

Secret, Angels, Thinking