Quotes about art (5831 quotes, page 57)

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.'”

Will Durant book The Story of Philosophy

Source: The Story of Philosophy (1926), p. 87. The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7

Soul , Time , Happiness , Spring

“In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical – in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 28.

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Are we still of any use?, p. 16

Strong , Truth , Way , Evil

“So, ungentle reader, (as you and I value what we should ashamed—after witnessing a few minor circus-marvels—to call our "lives,") let us never be fooled into taking seriously that perfectly superficial distinction which is vulgarly drawn between the circus-show and "art" or "the arts." Let us not forget that every authentic "work of art" is in and of itself alive and that, however "the arts" may differ among themselves, their common function is the expression of that supreme alive-ness which is known as "beauty."”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

This being so, our three ring circus is art—for to contend that the spectacle in question is not an authentic manifestation of "beauty" is as childish, as to dismiss the circus on the ground that it is "childish," is idiotic.
"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)

Forgetting , Beauty , Fools

“Art is an act of the soul, not of the intellect. When we are dealing with people's dreams — their visions, really — we are in the realm of the sacred. We are involved with forces and energies larger than our own. We invoke the Great Creator when we invoke our own creativity, and that creative force has the power to alter lives, fulfill destinies, and answer our dreams.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), "Invocation"

Soul , Dreams , People

“Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty" interview by Jean-Paul Coillard in Disturb ezine (1998) https://www.jgballard.ca/media/1998_disturb_magazine.html

Sex , World , Reality , Cars

“At present, I am particularly excited by 'bad taste'. I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed 'The Work of Art.'”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

I wish to play with human feeling, with its 'morbidity' in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.
Quote from Klein's 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', 1961; from the Yves Klein Archives - archived from the original on 15 January 2013; as cited on Wikipedia: Yves Klein
After the opening of his unsuccessful exhibition at Leo Castelli's Gallery, New York 1961, Klein stayed with Rotraut Uecker (fr) at the Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the exhibition. While there, he wrote the 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', a proclamation of the 'multiplicity of new possibilities'
1960 -1964

Bad luck , Feeling

“This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen, and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people, and consecrates man. In art, it possesses all varieties of genius,—writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, musicians; majesty, grace, power, force, splendour, colour, form, style; it renews its strength in the real and in the ideal, and bears in its hand the two thunderbolts, the true and the beautiful. In science it accomplishes unheard-of miracles; it makes of cotton salt petre, of steam a horse, of the voltaic battery a workman, of the electric fluid a messenger, of the sun a painter; it waters itself with subterranean streams, pending the time when it shall warm itself with the central fire; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope upon the infinitely great, the microscope upon the infinitely little, and it finds stars in the first abyss, and insects in the second, which prove to it the existence of God... It annihilates time, it annihilates space, it annihilates suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and has an answer in ten minutes; it cuts off a man's leg, the man sings and smiles.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Singing , God , Time , Sun

“There also must be an internal critique of injustices, of the management of material and human resources, and of abuses of political power. Above all, there must be criticism of the culture itself: its morality, religion, customs, and arts. And there must be demand for respect of the individual's uniqueness, with the society regarded as the medium for individual development and for brotherhood.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Religion

“[M]athematics is not a popular subject... The reason for this is to be found in the common superstition that [it] is but a continuation... of the fine art of arithmetic, of juggling with numbers. [We] combat that superstition, by offering, instead of formulas, figures that may be looked at and that may easily be supplemented by models which the reader may construct. This book... bring[s] about a greater enjoyment of mathematics, by making it easier... to penetrate the essence of mathematics without... a laborious course of studies.”

David Hilbert Geometry and the Imagination

Preface
Geometry and the Imagination (1952)

Study , Books , Mathematics , Making love

“My entrance into the field of abstract art came about as the result of a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris in 1930. I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of color he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them [Mondrian's flat painting] oscillate, he objected. I went home and tried to paint abstractly - but in two weeks I was back again among plastic materials.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1950s - 1960s, Excerpt, What Abstract Art Means to Me (1951)

Home , Painting , Nature , Color

“As truly serious art must follow the greater laws, and not only appearances, I try to put all the elements in motion in my mobile sculptures.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1930s, It Shall Move - On Mobile Sculptures (1932)

Appearance , Law

“How can art be realized? Out of volumes, motion, spaces bounded by the great space, the universe. Out of different masses, tight, heavy, middling - indicated by variations of size or color - directional line - vectors which represent speeds, velocities, accelerations, forces, etc...”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

these directions making between them meaningful angles, and senses, together defining one big conclusion or many. Spaces, volumes, suggested by the smallest means in contrast to their mass, or even including them, juxtaposed, pierced by vectors, crossed by speeds. Nothing at all of this is fixed. Each element able to move, to stir, to oscillate, to come and go in its relationships with the other elements in its universe. It must not be just a fleeting moment but a physical bond between the varying events in life. Not extractions, but abstractions. Abstractions that are like nothing in life except in their manner of reacting.
1930s, How Can Art Be Realized? (1932)

Universe , Color , Speed

“This will bring about a complete transformation of society: a new livingness will characterize our relationships and institutions; a new freedom and sense of joy will replace the present fear. Above all else, mankind will come to realize that living is an art, based on certain laws, requiring the function of the intuition for correct expression.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Art of Living: Living within the Laws of Life (2006)

Law , Freedom , Joy , Sense

“Architecture differs from a work of art, which can be displayed in different settings and the subject-matter, form and meaning will remain unchanged. The physicality of any built structure can be altered over time as additions and alterations are made. Moreover, a building or work of architecture can change its function as it meets the different demands of its occupants, although its exterior appearance may be unaltered. And its meaning may change depending on the nature of the context. This reveals some of the problems of interpreting historic architecture from a modern-day perspective as the physical changes and different cultural contexts transform the object.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 1 : Reading the past : What is architectural history?

Time , Dependency , Nature , Problem

“All art, in fact, has these two aspects: its content and its frame (or setting), which sets it apart from nonart and which says of itself, “This is not an everyday sort of communication. This is unreal.””

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980), Chapter 3, “Self-Reference and Paradox” (p. 53)

Communication

“Real sexiness is about confidence, intelligence, mystery, art and passion.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: The Independent, Kate, Nash, Kate Nash: 'Real sexiness is about art, mystery and intelligence', 29 October 2010 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/kate-nash-real-sexiness-is-about-art-mystery-and-intelligence-2119279.html,

Confidence , Intelligence , Self-confidence , Passion

“The global village is a reality. We are joined by satellite, supersonic travel, four thousand international meetings each year, tens of thousands of multinational companies, international organizations and newsletters and journals, even an emergent pan-culture of music, movies, art, humor.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy

Music , Travel , Reality

“For the amoral herd that fears boredom above all else, everything becomes entertainment. Sex and sport, politics and the arts are transformed into entertainment… Nothing is immune from the demand that boredom be relieved.”

Merold Westphal (1940)

but without personal involvement, for mass society is a spectator society

p. 50
Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992)

Sport , Sex , Fear

“The art of cultural translation consists in oscillating between distance and nearness, between one’s own concepts and the native ones, or – to put it differently – making the exotic familiar and the familiar exotic.”

Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1962) Norwegian social anthropologist and professor

Source: What is Anthropology? (2nd ed., 2017), Ch. 2 : Key Concepts

Making love

“Art has different meaning for different people. For some its realism, for some its escapism, and you have to accept that.”

Ekta Kapoor (1975) TV and film producer

CNN News18 - Ekta Kapoor Interview with Rajeev Masand - 4 Oct 2019, at 4 Min 28 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX-C4jRzxM4
From interview with Rajeev Masand

People

“They are hideous Golgothas, these old intermural cemeteries of ours. In other cities cemeteries are beautiful with all that the art of the gardener and sculptor can give....There the horror is masked. Here it glares at us with empty sockets. The tombs are fissured, or have caved in, or have crumbled down into shapeless bricks and mortar...[and] crawfish undermine the walls to feast upon what is hidden within.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Lafcadio Hearn, Creole Sketches, ed. Charles Woodward Hutsun (1880; Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1924), p. 136. Lafcadio Hearn referring to the cemeteries in New Orleans.

Beauty

“My dislike of the Jews is that which our forefathers had of them: I dislike them as insolent ruffians, who mock the religion and morality of Christians; I dislike them as people that never work, and form a body of wretches who live by trick; I dislike them as usurers, and the great agents of those systems of usury by which so many nations have so severely suffered; and this nation, above all others; in France they were the rapacious farmers of the taxes; in Poland, in Germany, in Hungary; every where, where they have been allowed to practise their arts of plunder, they have produced ruin to the people, and very frequently to the state.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (5 June 1830), p. 730
1830s

Suffering , Religion , People

“Art and science can best grow and develop in a society which cherishes freedom and which shows respect for the needs, the happiness and the dignity of human beings.”

Carl Ferdinand Cori (1896–1984) Czech Nobel prize laureate and scientist

Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes in 1947, Nobel banquet speech for award received in 1947, Nobel Foundation. Stockholm, Sweden. 1948 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1947/cori-cf/speech/

Freedom , Happiness , Science

“Music is the deepest of the arts and deep beneath the arts.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Harvard University Department of Music, Music and Criticism, A Symposium (May 1947; published 1948, p. 11 https://archive.org/details/musiccriticismsy00symp/page/10)

Music

“How do you speak that all men may hear you in their own tongues? It is an art known and practiced by teachers of old.”

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958)

Men , Teachers

“The military has more than 130 bands with more than 6000 musicians, costing about a half-billion dollars a year. Meanwhile the National Endowment for the Arts gets $155M, a paltry amount compared to other advanced democracies. Arts & artists should be robustly funded & supported!”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Twitter https://twitter.com/marwilliamson (24 Oct 2019)
Williamson's quotes in social media

Democracy , Support

“That’s the key to modern Britain … only the mentally castrated are eligible for praise and awards. It’s against the law to be intelligent! The dumb have inherited the earth. Because of this, British arts are controlled by completely limited possibilities, and the same faces appear everywhere.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

CULTURE Pop Icon Morrissey Says Diversity is Not a Strength https://summit.news/2019/06/24/pop-icon-morrissey-says-diversity-is-not-a-strength/?fbclid=IwAR398wYgRpEduvLPMg8qiO9WQNVnZl3LaNydJ8Bx1-DTF33ahE2rVTHFKuE, June 24 2019
In interviews etc., About politics and society

Appearance , Intelligence , Law

“The skill and the art of the labourer have been overlooked, and he has been vilified; while the work of his hands has been worshiped.”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825), p. 66

“I think that art helps evaluate some of the psychology of yourself as a child, and to illuminate some things you may never have understood.”

Lucy Liu (1968) American actress and model

On the power of art in “Lucy Liu on making art to find a sense of belonging” https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lucy-liu-artsy/index.html in CNN (2019 Nov 28)

Thinking , Help

“Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make your choice.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Road to the Sea

The Road to the Sea, p. 298
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Making love

“Can I just once again state my love for it and hope it gets merged soon? Maybe the code isn't perfect, but I've skimmed it, and compared to the horrors that are OpenVPN and IPSec, it's a work of art.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Torvalds, Linus, 2018-08-02, <nowiki>Linus Torvalds on the netdev mailing list about wireguard</nowiki>, 2020-04-25 https://lists.openwall.net/netdev/2018/08/02/124,
2010s, 2018

Hope , Perfection , Love , Making love

“Art is my language, pens and brushes are my armor.”

Lord Gibson

Frome the Drawings "Angels" and "Epiphany"

“Wine making is an artistic creation in which you deal with a variety of styles, colors, and inspiration therefore good wine, like good art, can evoke emotions, sensations and create an experience which leaves a lasting impression.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Stated in the description of Video artwork Ribolla https://artelaguna.world/videoart/ribolla.30318/ , Arte Laguna World https://artelaguna.world/. Also quoted on visual art work Sauvignon https://www.wikiart.org/en/giovanni-morassutti/sauvignon, Series Wine & Art https://www.wikiart.org/en/giovanni-morassutti/all-works#!#filterName:Series_wine-art,resultType:masonry, Wikiart.org (28 April, 2020) https://www.wikiart.org/

Wine , Making love , Color

“However, I gradually start to appreciate the Japanese print art [in wood prints] as a whole less than a small year ago. We can discuss it later, sometimes. For the time being I can say that the external elegance and skills are often not supported by a deep inner empathy with the depicted things.”

Jan Mankes (1889–1920) Dutch painter

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Jan Mankes, in het Nederlands:) Wel ga ik langzamerhand de Japansche prentkunst [in houtdrukken] als geheel een trapje lager stellen dan een klein jaar geleden. Daar kunnen we het later nog wel eens over hebben. Voorloopig kan ik zeggen dat de uiterlijke zwier en knapheid veelal niet gesteund wordt door een diep innerlijk meeleven met de afgebeelde dingen.

In a letter to Pauwels, 13 June 1914; as cited in Jan Mankes – in woord en beeld, ed. Sjoerd van Faassen; Museum Bèlvédère, Heerenveen, 2015 ISBN 1877-0983, n. 22, p. 29
1909 - 1914

Support , Time

“Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1911/nov/28/morocco#column_384 in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911)
1910s

History , Success , Forgetting , Intelligence

“..the art-reviews on my work in the French and English magazines.. ..[are] enough to claim that I already have reached a prominent position among today's marine painters. I would also like to take this fact into consideration when determining my prices.”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek

(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..de critieken op mijn werk in de Fransche, Engelsche bladen [zijn].. ..voldoende om te kunen beweren dat ik reeds nu onder de tegenwoordige marine schilders een voorname plaats inneem. Dit wil ik ook bij het stellen [bepalen] mijner prijzen in aanmerking genomen hebben.

In a letter to art-sellers Goupil in The Hague, 1870's; as cited in De Copieboeken of De Wording van de Haagsche School, Johan Poort; Mesdag Documentatie Centrum, Wassenaar, 1996, pp. 89-90
before 1880

“Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Beim Wort genommen (1955); as translated by Harry Zohn

Love , Making love , Beauty

“Let echo, too, perform her part,
Prolonging every note with art;
And in a low expiring strain,
Play all the concert o'er again.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (1699), st. 4

Parting

“Great art isn't about decoration - it's a different language that can both touch our hearts, and open our minds.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Source: I.D. Magazine Interview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.D._(magazine)

Heart

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!”

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

it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings. (The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.)

“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Truth

“Tea is a work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Kakuzō Okakura, The Book of Tea (1906), Ch. II.

Tea

“That's the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.”

David Sedaris Naked

Essay: "Something for everyone". (p.238)
Naked (1997)

Way , Beauty , School

“Embryonic artworks grow
In the womb heart of the artists,
Until the fever of making seizes their limbs,
And they deliver their art through labors of love.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Bitch Goddess Beauty

Love , Making love , Heart

“Mystic Art affirms the holy mystery and the ideals of truth,
goodness and beauty. No other artistic ideal can fulfill the longing
soul like the creation and appreciation of relevant sacred art.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Truth , Beauty , Soul

“Mystic Art is spirit expressed into matter. A mystic artist
receives and transmits revelation, providing their art as a medium
for messages from the divine matrix of Creation.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

“…When I’m not working, I safeguard my time to go into a dream state and not have to think about the commercialization of my art or the commodification of myself...”

Liz Phair (1967) American musician

On separating herself from her stage persona in “In Conversation: Liz Phair” https://www.vulture.com/2019/09/liz-phair-horror-stories-in-conversation.html in Vulture (Sept 2019)

Thinking , Dreams , Time

“In a work of art, however modest, the peculiar character of life is always reflected in the fact that it has no parts which keep their qualitative identity in isolation. In the simplest design, the virtual constituents are indivisible, and inalienable from the whole.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Vol. 1, p. 200
Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1967, 1972, 1982)

Life , Parting

“The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Source: Philosophical Sketches (1962), Ch. 5, p. 94

Bad luck , Nature , Reality , Education

“Mathematics lays the foundation of all the exact sciences. It teaches the art of combining numbers, of calculating and measuring distances, how to solve problems, to weigh mountains, to fathom the depths of the ocean; but gives no directions how to ascertain the existence of a God.”

Ernestine Rose (1810–1892) American feminist activist

1881, A Defence of Atheism: A lecture delivered in Mercantile Hall, Boston on 10 April, 1861, p. 4
A Defence of Atheism

God , Mountain , Problem , Mathematics

“Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Source: Feeling and Form (1953), Ch. 3, p. 40

Feeling

“Art is the tree of life.
SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH
ART is the Tree of LIFEGOD is JESUS”

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

The Laocoön
1800s

Tree , Science , Life , Death

“When nations grow old,
the Arts grow cold,
And Commerce settles on every tree:
And the poor and the old
Can live upon gold,
For all are born poor.
Aged sixty-three.”

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

On Art And Artists (1800) 'On the Foundation of the Royal Academy'
1800s

Tree , Age

“O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.”

William Blake The Sick Rose

The Sick Rose, plate 39.
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Night , Joy , Secret , Love

“Spoken Word poetry is an art form that fits me well because it enables me to bring all the layers of who I am into one space — A reader, writer, and performer…”

Raymond Antrobus (1986)

On his preferred poetry style in “Prose Interviews London Poet Raymond Antrobus” https://medium.com/prose-matters/prose-interviews-london-poet-raymond-antrobus-c0e1fdf720b9 in Medium Magazine (2016 Mar 30)

“Thou Great First Cause, least understood
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art good
And that myself am blind.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Stanza 2
Source: The Universal Prayer (1738)

Sense

“I don’t have much time for the idea that art is some languorous thing on the sidelines, and that you have to wait 50 years before you address a subject…”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: On writing about a topic even if it is recent in “Kamila Shamsie: ‘Being a UK citizen makes me feel more able to take part in the conversation’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/27/kamila-shamsie-home-fire-man-booker-longlisted-author-interview in The Guardian (2017 Aug 27)

Idea , Time , Waiting

“When the first alien spacecraft lands in Washington, I want the little green people to walk first into the National Gallery of Art. I want our art to explain who and what we are before our leaders do.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Source: The New York Times Magazine, The Creators, 1999 https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/millennium/m4/ferren.html

People

“We know with certainty that never could man have acquired the sciences and arts by himself guided only by his natural abilities and without the benefit of instruction. (This applies, e.g., to) medicine, the knowledge of the physiological temperaments, the diseases and their causes, in all their numerous varieties, and the invention of adequate treatment and cure of each of them by drugs or preparations, which could never have been actually tried out. For how could anyone test every prescription on every disease since this would take tens of thousands of years and necessitate the examination of every sick person in the world?”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

Regarding the role of experiment and observation, Ibn Hazm: Kitab al-fisal fi’l-milal wa-l-ahwa wa-l-nihal, 5 parts in two vols; Cairo, 1899 and 1903; Vol I, p. 72.

Personality , Knowledge , Nature , World

“An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Joyce, Act I
Stoppard called this "the most important" speech in the play
Source: Travesties (1974)

War , Horse , Relation ships , Lovers

“That noble Lord is of opinion, not only that we ought to exclude Natives from office, but that even by encouraging them to study the arts and learning of Europe, we are preparing the way for the utter destruction of our power in India. I must leave it to the noble Lord to explain what seems to me a rather singular inconsistency in his opinion. I am at a loss to understand how, while utterly contemning education when it is given to Europeans, he should regard it with dread when it is given to Natives. This training, we are told, when given to a European, makes him a bookworm, a twaddler, a man unfit for the active duties of life; but give the same education to the Hindoo, and it arms him with such an accession of intellectual power, that an established government, with an army of 250,000 men, backed by the whole army and navy of England, are to go down inevitably before its irresistible power.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Commons (24 June 1853) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1853/jun/24/government-of-india-bill-adjourned#column_758
1850s

Loss , Study , Understanding , Learning

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Soul , Hell , Imagination , Time

“God just put a love for it inside of me, I love telling stories, drawing and painting. Animation is a fairly solitary art form. But what happens when you sit in a theater with an audience and you hear their audible responses to your work—the crying, the laughter—there is nothing like it. I just love storytelling. I am a ham actor with a pencil. I love performing on canvas or on paper or right now on a digital screen.”

John Pomeroy (1951) animator

Animation professor returns to roots as illustrator of Disney biography https://www.lipscomb.edu/now/animation-professor-returns-roots-illustrator-disney-biography (May 8, 2019)

God , Drawing , Painting , Animals

“[W]hat is now and then attempted is perhaps "for art's sake."”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

He that saveth his art shall lose it.
Meynell alludes to the saying of Jesus: "He that saveth his life shall lose it" (Mark 8:35).
Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. X. "In Churches", p. 134

“A sense of art mixes with our modern piety. We are apt to admire the evangelical reticence for its dignity,[…] we are apt to respect the Scripture narratives with their few intense details, their close events and their great omissions alike, for their simplicity, and—it is to be feared that our literature leads us so far—for their "effect."”

Alice Meynell (1847–1922) English publisher, editor, writer, poet, activist

Source: Mary, the Mother of Jesus: An Essay (1912), Ch. II. "Mary in the Scriptures", pp. 18, 21

Sense , Fear , Literature

“Commerce is the mother of the arts, the sciences, the professions, and in this twentieth century has itself become an art, a science, a profession.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Science

“A thousand departments of mental and physical activity foster and in turn are fostered by its achievement. People must be governed, and there must be those who govern. Laws must be made, and there must be those who study, and those who execute these laws. People must be taught, and there must be teachers. All these and the Church, the newspaper, the theatre, the fine arts are essential to the completeness of the State, to the happiness and safety of its people; but Commerce is the main stem, or trunk, where they are all branches, supplied with the sap of its far-reaching wealth. It is as necessary to the existence of any nation as blood to the physical man. That country in which trade flourishes is accounted happy, while that in which Commerce droops provokes shaking of heads and prophecies of downfall.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Study , Law , Country , Wealth

“If Commerce is necessary to wealth, no Commerce means no wealth, and our statesman soon finds himself out of employment. Where wealth again is greatest, everything else being fairly equal, arts thrive the most.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Wealth

“Commerce creates wealth, and it is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments built up, or pulled down, for Commerce. Commerce cuts the way, and all professions, all arts follow.”

Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858–1947) America born English businessman

The Romance of Commerce (1918), Concerning Commerce

Country , Wealth , Relation ships , Way

“I believe that the art world will expand into a broader field and intertwine more and more disciplines and cultures setting new trends within the cultural field.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

In response to the question, " Which new arts management practices and topics are going to be adapted in the near future in the European context?", from the interview "Arts management in South Asia and Europe. The intertwining of arts management and artistic practice", Arts Management Network - State of the arts (May 25, 2020) https://www.artsmanagement.net/Articles/Arts-management-in-South-Asia-and-Europe-The-intertwining-of-arts-management-and-artistic-practice,4139.

World

“Our aim is to take our art to the world and make people understand what it is to move.”

David Belle (1973) French actor

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/1939867.stm

Understanding , People , World , Making love

“The English race, consequently, has long and successfully studied the art of curbing executive power to the constant neglect of the art of perfecting executive methods. It has exercised itself much more in controlling than in energizing government, It has been more concerned to render government just and moderate than to make it facile, well-ordered,and effective.”

Woodrow Wilson The Study of Administration

Source: 1880s, "The Study of Administration," 1887, p. 206;

Study , Perfection , Making love , Exercises

“I'm your narrator. It's my task to say
Just where and how things happen in our play,
Set the bare stage with words instead of props
And keep on talking till the curtain drops. …
It's an old task — old as the human heart,
Old as those bygone players and their art
Who, in old days when faith was nearer earth,
Played out the mystery of Jesus' birth
In hall or village green or market square
For all who chose to come and see them there,
And, if they knew that King Herod, in his crown,
Was really Wat, the cobbler of the town,
And Tom, the fool, played Abraham the Wise,
They did not care. They saw with other eyes.
The story was their own — not far away,
As real as if it happened yesterday,
Full of all awe and wonder yet so near,
A marvelous thing that could have happened here
In their own town — a star that could have blazed
On their own shepherds, leaving them amazed,
Frightened and questioning and following still
To the bare stable — and the miracle.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Narrator
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Faith , Question , Star , Heart

“This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person, particularly extreme forms of consciousness like grief, dreams, drunkenness, spiritual revelations, even insanity. Unlike movies, where we’re always onlookers, in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person’s soul from the inside. No other art form does that. And I like dealing with particularly intense inner experiences because I think that in many ways, this is what the novel does best.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On what novels convey to Tartt in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

Soul , Personality , Dreams , Thinking

“Credulity in arts and opinions... is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy... Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Source: De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623) as quoted by Edward Thorpe, History of Chemistry, Vol. 1, p. 43.

Imagination , Search , Light , Nature

“A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 14; translated by W. K. Marriot

War , Study , Men

“There...is the necessity for freedom of speech and the arts. We have to scrutinize all the advances of society to judge whether they are cruel or frustrate cruelty, and for that purpose we must hear the evidence of all persons affected by their operation and of all persons qualified by experience or learning or speculative gifts to form an interesting opinion on what those operations might be. It is therefore necessary that all classes of men should be given the fullest opportunity to express themselves without constraint, not only out of admiration for an abstraction , but as a practical measure toward human survival. It is also necessary that the artist, of whatsoever kind, should be free to anatomize the spirit, so that we can comprehend the battlefield that is this life, and which are the troops of light and which of darkness, and what light may be, and darkness.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

Source: "I Believe", in I Believe : The Personal Philosophies of Certain Eminent Men and Women Of Our Time edited by Clifton Fadiman. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1939.

Freedom , Light , Personality , Learning

“I discovered the existence of an underground... This underground only occasionally intermingles in part with the worlds of business, science, politics, academia, and the so-called arts... it definitely...infiltrates all of Western civilization.... one thing is usually certain: members of this underground who are respected in their communities don't talk about the interest or beliefs that qualify them for membership unless they know you too are in the club. They have learned from experience that to be outspoken brings censure —from their ministers, customers, employers, or even friends... They are found in all walks of life: scientists, psychiatrists, physicians, housewives, college students, businessmen, teenagers, and at least a few ministers in formal religions... They gather in small groups, quietly and often semi-secretly... usually discuss affairs of the underground only with other members... All are to some degree emotionally and intellectually dedicated to a cause. Finally, the underground has its own literature, language, technology, and to some extent demigods.”

Robert Monroe (1915–1995) American founder of The Monroe Institute

Journeys Out of the Body (1971), Chapter 2. Search and Research

Religion , Business , Learning , Communication

“People made fun of me, the little kid who was making rock'n'roll records. But I knew. I would try to tell all the groups, we're doing something very important. Trust me. And it was very hard because these people didn't have that sense of destiny. They didn't know they were producing art that would change the world. I knew.”

Phil Spector (1939–2021) American record producer, songwriter

People , Sense , World , Making love

“I see a face of love,
Fair as sweet music when my heart was strong:
Yea — art thou come again to me, great Song?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The face bent over him like silver night
In long-remembered summers; that calm light
Of days which shine in firmaments of thought,
That past unchangeable, from change still wrought.
The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Strong , Heart , Music , Love

“The real DJ is an artist and as such creates art. Something unique, which can not be recreated.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Il vero DJ è un artista e come tale crea arte. Qualcosa di unico, che non si può ricreare.
Source: prevale.net

“Having fun is an art and the secret is playing DJ.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Divertirsi è un'arte e il segreto è giocare DJ.
Source: prevale.net

Secret

“Insecurity is part of true art.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'insicurezza è parte della vera arte.
Source: prevale.net

Parting

“And now I salute thee with awe, with veneration, and wonder, ancient India, of whom I am the adept, the India of the highest splendor of art and philosophy. May thy awakening astonish the Occident, decadent, mean, daily dwindling, slayer of nations, slayer of Gods, slayer of souls, which yet bows down still, ancient India, before the prodigies of thy primordial conceptions!”

Pierre Loti (1850–1923) French writer

Source: attributed and quoted in Josyer, G R. Sanskrit Civilization, International Academy of Sanskrit Research. Mysore 1966 p. 1

https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Tribute_to_Hinduism.html?id=G3AMAQAAMAAJ A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture

God , Soul

“It’s not a coincidence that governments use art on coins and notes. They do this to help us believe in money. Without art, it’s hard for us to believe in anything.”

Damien Hirst (1965) artist

Shaw, Anny, NFT breakthrough: Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin creates 99% energy efficient blockchain—and Damien Hirst is its first artist https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/nft-breakthrough-ethereum-co-founder-joe-lubin-creates-energy-efficient-blockchain-and-damien-hirst-is-its-first-artist, The Art Newspaper, 30 March 2021

Money , Help

“When one sees, the variety and abundance of beautiful and bloodless fruits that gorge the markets of civilisation and considers the amount of art available for cooking and compounding this abundance, and considers, too, what might be still further accomplished in the production and preparation of foods by scientific attention to the matter, it seems so strange, so sad, and so frightful, that man, elected by the accidents of evolution to be the model and schoolmaster of the world, and adapted so signally to a guiltless diet, should continue to perpetrate in the daylight of the twentieth century the barbarous, blood-sucking atrocities of the reptile.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, p. 130

Food , Beauty , World , Sadness

“The greatest artist is he who is greatest in the highest reaches of his art, even although he may lack the qualities necessary for the adequate execution of some minor details. It is not by his faults, but by his excellences, that we measure a great man. The strength of a beam is measured by its weakest part, of a man by his strongest..”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

On Actors and the Art of Acting (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1875) p. 13

Parting

“I believe that nature and art can express one of the fundamental mysterious truths of life, equal to all of us.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

Truth , Life , Nature

“A habit must be established before it can be improved. Start small. Master the art of showing up. Optimize later.”

James Clear (1986) American author and speaker

Source: https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1054799443768287232

Optimism

“Art is the canary in the goldmine.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

“My trade and my art is living.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Mon métier et mon art, c'est vivre.
Book II, Ch. 6
Essais (1595), Book II

“I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love... It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigour of the earlier world?”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"The History of Pattern-Designing" lecture (1882) The Collected Works of William Morris (1910 - 1915) Vol. 22

History , World , Love , Making love

“Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the smoke with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings?
So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first — and all this for trifles that no man really needs!”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Speech, London (10 March 1880)

Tree , Hate , Love , Learning

“In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred even when it takes for a subject the worst excesses of desire; since it has in view only the sincerity of observation, it cannot debase itself. A true work of art is always noble, even when it translates the stirrings of the brute, for at that moment, the artist who has produced it had as his only objective, the most conscientious rendering possible of the impression he has felt.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Albert Edward Elsen (1985). The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin. p. 131
1930s and later

Sincerity

“The artist must learn the difference between the appearance of an object and the interpretation of this object through his medium. The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Attributed to Rodin in: Southwestern Art Vol. 6 (1977). p. 20; Partly cited in: A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought (2004) by Lloyd Albert Johnson, p. 7
1930s and later

Appearance , Making love , Learning

“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.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Preface, p. 7-8
1910s, Art, 1912

Understanding , Search , Pleasure , Nature

“To me, art has always been a fun way to be creative.”

Roger Kastel (1932) American artist

Hopkinton Center for the Arts show delivers excitement and skill https://web.archive.org/web/20190504184619/https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/entertainment/20180211/hopkinton-center-for-arts-show-delivers-excitement-and-skill (February 11, 2018)

Way