Quotes about art

page 11

“The excellence of every Art is its intensity.”

“It would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.”

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

“If our lives are truly "hid with Christ in God," the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all that we do and say and write. What we are is going to be visible in our art, no matter how secular (on the surface) the subject may be.”

“12--Lose Battles, But Win The War: Grand Strategy

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.”

“In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth. For nothing is more precious than the life force and may the love of that force guide you as you go.”

“People want to be bowled over by something special. Nine times out of ten you might strike out, but that tenth time, that peak experience, is what people want. That's what can move the world. That's art.”

“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.”

“Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art”

“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”

“Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.”

“As I looked back over my life, I realized that I enjoyed nothing--not art, not sex--more than going to the movies.”

“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”

“Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.”

“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”

“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.”

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”

“Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.”

“The older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. The Zune was crappy because the people at Microsoft don’t really love music or art the way we do. We won because we personally love music.”

“I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.”

“A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.”

“If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle. But if you don't, it belongs to anyone's imagination. It stays alive forever.”

“Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.”

“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?”

“God, of thy goodness, give me Thyself;
for Thou art enough for me,
and I can ask for nothing less
that can be full honor to Thee.
And if I ask anything that is less,
ever Shall I be in want,
for only in Thee have I all.”

“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”

“Thou art a dreaming thing,
A fever of thyself.”

“Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.”

“Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me; whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?”

“The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.”

“Last year I abstained
this year I devour

without guilt
which is also an art”

“I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's a clever anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.”

“It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.”

“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“Art isn't meaningless… It is in itself. It isn't in that it tries to make life less so.”

“A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.”

“Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.”

“A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.”

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

“The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.”

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”

“As I see it, part of the art of being a hero is knowing when you don't need to be one anymore.”

“Art is the reason I get up in the morning, but the definition ends there. It doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define.”

“What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.”

“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.”

“Macey couldn't decide whether to be intrigued that Hale was walking around with a state-of-the-art covert communications device or be jealous because she'd been caught without one of her own.”

“Young people want mirrors. Older people want art.”

“We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.”

“‎"But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.”

“It was odd to have something so personal out there in that way, but the good thing about art is that no one necessarily knows what you mean by it anyway.”

“I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot.”

“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions, when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.”

“You'll need to suffer to make any real art.”

“The role of art is to make a world which can be inhabited.”

“Any asshole can chase a skirt, art takes discipline.”

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.”

“I was the basest of readers. All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form.”

“I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.”

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.”

“I’m done. I’m old, I’m sad - that’s on a good day. I want out of this mess. But I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.”

“You don’t make art out of good intentions.”

“I think it [religion] is an art, the greatest one; an extension of the communion all the other arts attempt.”

“The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing., nothing but mutations.”

“I am thee and thou art me and all of one is the other.”

“Education isn't just about feeding the brain. Art and music feed the heart and soul.”

“Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.”

“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”

“Love isn't just a feeling. It's an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration but also a lot of work.”

“Translation is the art of failure.”

“A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

“Paris is the only city in the world where starving to death is still considered an art.”

“The truest art I would strive for in any work would be to give the page the same qualities as earth: weather would land on it harshly; light would elucidate the most difficult truths; wind would sweep away obtuse padding.”

“The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get access to the site as much as it is in the art… Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity - I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks.”

“No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.”

“The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself.”

“When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply asked,'then what are we fighting for?”

“There's no such thing as civilization. The word just means the art of living in cities.”

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”

“Did you just use juxtaposition in a sentence?"
"Yes, Sage" he said patiently. "We use it all the time with art,… That, and I know how to use a dictionary”

“the way to create art is to burn and destroy
ordinary concepts and to substitute them
with new truths that run down from the top of the head
and out of the heart”

“Those prancing little pants-wetters come here to learn the colorful and gentlemanly art of fencing, with its many sportingand its proscriptions againstengagements. You on the other hand, you are going to learn how to.”

“Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”

“Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat.”

“Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”

“It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.”

“Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.”

“The greatest art is to shape the quality of the day.”

“Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.”

“And when thou art weary I'll find thee a bed,
Of mosses and flowers to pillow thy head.”

“The love of complexity without reductionism makes art; the love of complexity with reductionism makes science.”

“Weirdly, an image of Adrian’s Love painting came back to me. I thought of the jagged red streak, slashing through the blackness, ripping it
apart. Staring at Jill and her inconsolable pain, I suddenly understood his art a little bit better.”

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art. May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect.”

“Philokleon: Let each man exercise the art he knows.”

“Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”

“I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.”

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.”

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

“I'm an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It's an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner.”