Quotes about art
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“I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

"Professions for Women"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

“Whether it be generally recognized or not, what we call the civilized world, which for seven hundred years has been moving steadily forward in the spirit of liberalism and toward liberalism s high ideals, has now turned suddenly and violently backward. The guidance of reason and of understanding, of moral principle and of religious faith, has been shockingly and cruelly disslaced by the rule of brute force. Our literally stupendous achievements in literature, in philosophy, in the arts, in the sciences and in the comforts and conveniences of life count for nothing in the control of no national policy and of national conduct, and by far the major portion of the world is now under the rule of brutal compulsion. Such portion of the world as is not in that condition may soon be struggling for its life.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Liberty-Equality-Fraternity (1942)

Life, World, Faith, Literature

“Freedom of mind and mind itself have been most fully developed in regions where trade developed at the same time. In all ages, without exception, every intense production of art, ideas, and spiritual values has occurred in some locality where a remarkable degree of economic activity was also manifest.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Source: Regards sur le monde actuel [Reflections on the World Today] (1931), pp. 167-168

Age, Idea, Freedom, Time

“Art, and, above all, music, has a fundamental function, which is to catalyze the sublimation that it can bring about through all means of expression. It must aim through fixations which are landmarks, to draw [one] towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous, and perfect. If a work of art succeeds in this undertaking even for a single moment, it attains its goal.”

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) Greek composer

Formalized Music: Thought and Mathematics in Composition, ISBN 1576470792

Truth, Music, Drawing, Perfection

“For what would I be otherwise but sport,
In love with one who does not care for me?
I will hide pain in smiles, sooner than be
The common talk. It is a bitter art
To sing a happy song with a sad heart.”

Christine de Pizan De triste cuer chanter joyeusement

Car en mon cuer porte couvertement Le dueil qui soit qui plus me puet desplaire, Et si me fault, pour les gens faire taire, Rire en plorant et très amerement De triste cuer chanter joyeusement. Rondeau "De triste cuer chanter joyeusement", line 8; Maurice Roy (ed.) Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan (1886) vol. 1, p. 154, as translated by http://www.brindin.com/pfpistri.htm by Sheenagh Pugh.

Love, Pain, Happiness, Sadness

“If a painting has a soulful effect on the viewer, if it puts his mind into a soulful mood, then it has fulfilled the first requirement of a work of art. However bad it might be in drawing, color, handling, etc.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich's letter 8 Feb. 1809, to 'Akademiedirektor Schulz'; as cited by Helmut Bôrsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jàhnig in Caspar David Friedrich: Gemâlde, Druckgraphik und bildmassige Zeichnungen (Munich: Prestel, 1973), 182-83, esp. 183; translation, David Britt - note 117 http://d2aohiyo3d3idm.cloudfront.net/publications/virtuallibrary/0892366745.pdf 1794 - 1840

Color, Soul, Mood, Drawing

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love, Marriage, Age, World

“An artist can't produce great art unless he has a philosophy. He can't say something unlee he has something to say.”

L. S. Lowry (1887–1976) British visual artist

Interview tapes Cotton & Mullineux

“"What is this romance?" she mused.
"Ah, that’s the question. I’ve never come across a definition that satisfied me, though there are some very good ones"—he glanced in the direction of his books.
"It’s not altogether knowing the other person, perhaps—it’s ignorance," she hazarded.
"Some authorities say it’s a question of distance—romance in literature, that is—"
"Possibly, in the case of art. But in the case of people it may be—" she hesitated.”

Virginia Woolf book Night and Day

Night and Day (1919)

People, Books, Literature, Question

“For what advantage is it, that the world enjoys profound peace, if thou art at war with thyself? This then is the peace we should keep. If we have it, nothing from without will be able to harm us. And to this end the public peace contributes no little: whence it is said, ‘That we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.’ But if any one is disturbed when there is quiet, he is a miserable creature. Seest thou that He speaks of this peace which I call the third (inner, ed.) kind? Therefore when he has said, ‘that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life,’ he does not stop there, but adds ‘in all godliness and honesty.’ But we cannot live in godliness and honesty, unless that peace be established. For when curious reasonings disturb our faith, what peace is there? or when spirits of uncleanness, what peace is there?”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

Homilies on Timothy http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf113/Page_429.html, Homily VII

Life, War, World, Peace

“One of the main reasons for my interest early on in the art and technology relationship was that during my studies of movement and light in art I was struck by the technical components in this art. Contrary to most, if not all, specialists in the field who put the stress on purely plastic issues and in the first place on the constructivist tradition, I was convinced that the technical and technological elements played a decisive part in this art. One almost paradoxical experience was my encounter with the kinetic artist and author of the book Constructivism, George Rickey, and my discovery of the most subtle technical movements in his mobile sculptures. But what seemed to me still more decisive for my option towards the art and technology problematic was the encounter in the early 1950s with artists like Nicholas Schöffer and Frank Malina whose works were based on some first hand or second hand scientific knowledge and who effectively or symbolically employed contemporary technological elements that gave their works a prospective cultural meaning. The same sentiment prevailed in me when I encountered similar artistic endeavors from the 1950s onwards in the works of Piotr Kowalski, Roy Ascott and many others which confirmed me in the aesthetic option I had taken, particularly when I discovered that this option was not antinomic (contradictory) to another aspect of the creative works of the time, i. e. spectator participation.”

Frank Popper (1918) French art historian

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Books, Knowledge, Decision, Study

“I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience. Then you arrive in the States and it is $150 to go to an opera. Ridiculous. We have so much young talent on the streets, but because everything is commercial they finally drift away from their dream of their life.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union

The Daily Telegraph, 09/02/2004.

Life, People, Dreams, Disappointment

“In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education

Men, Appearance, Science, Dependency

“Among the several sins that I have been accused of committing, none is more false than the one that I have, as the principal objective in my work, the spirit of research. When I paint my object is to show what I have found and not what I am looking for. In art intentions are not sufficient and, as we say in Spanish, love must be proved by facts and not by reasons…”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311
Quotes, 1920's

Love, Painting, Falseness

“Many think that Cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a foetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life. A mineral substance, having geometric formation, is not made so for transitory purposes, it is to remain what it is and will always have its own form.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 323.

Life, Way, Thinking

“Does the painter imitate the body correctly if he guides his brush without any method, and if his hand is moved at random and the lines are not drawn with art? In the same way you will not put the sentiment of your mind in front of the others’ eyes unless you use appropriate and distinct words, a fitting arrangement of words and the right order of sentences. For, just as we represent bodies by colours, we represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.”

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 63

Way

“My mother was mistrustful of the education system, so it was all right with her if we didn't go to school. She was taking us to Truffaut films, and I was busy getting through a Knut Hamsun book or something, so she felt satisfied we weren't wasting our lives watching The Brady Bunch. Because of where we lived, I would've had to go to Belmont High, so the year I was supposed to start high school I tried to get into the High School for the Performing Arts, which had just opened. I sent them a tape of me playing blues guitar and some short stories I'd written, but they didn't want me.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

LA Weekly, 23 June 2000

Books, Education, School, Business

“Unjust Cause: This art is worth more than ten thousand staters, that one should choose the worse cause, and nevertheless be victorious.”

Aristophanés The Clouds

tr. Hickie 1853, vol. 1, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Cl.+1041 Clouds (423 BC)

Victory

“If art were to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Quoted as a 1968 statement of Lennon's in Sunday Tasmanian (29 September 1996), and in The Rough Guide to the Beatles (2003) by Chris Ingham, p. 271, this actually derives from a statement which Lennon perhaps had been quoting:
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.
José Ortega y Gasset, in "Art a Thing of No Consequence" in The Dehumanization of Art (1925)
Misattributed

Life

“Represent your figures in such action as may be fitted to express what purpose is in the mind of each; otherwise your art will not be admirable.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting

“It was inevitable that artists should turn around and question the validity of the fundamental assumption that art aimed at representation; and the moment the question was fairly posed it became clear the pseudo scientific assumption that fidelity to appearance was the measure of art had no logical foundation.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Lecture to Fabian Soiety 1917 Art and Life from Vision and design by Roger Fry , Forgotten Books , 2012
Art Quotes

Question, Appearance

“Art can no longer afford to be contemptuous of politics, and it appears to be time politics took a little instruction from art.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

Something About a Soldier (1940)

Appearance, Time

“The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within. On occasion the Voice of Peace resounds like thunder, jolting human beings out of their stupor.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Peace, Evil, Fight

“The ultimate goal of all visual artistic activity is construction! Architects, painters and sculptors must learn again to know and understand the multi-faceted form of building in its entirety as well as its parts. Only then will they of their own accord fill their works with the architectonic spirit they have lost in the art of the salon. Let us establish a new guild of craftsmen without the presumption of class distinctions building a wall of arrogance between craftsmen and artists. Together let us call for, devise and create the construction of the future, comprising everything in one form: architecture, sculpture and painting.”

Walter Gropius (1883–1969) German architect (1883-1969) and founder of the Bauhaus School

Manifesto (1919)

Understanding, Learning, Future, Parting

“The Author of the piece, is entitled to much credit for the goodness of his Pen: and I could wish he had as much credit for the rectitude of his Heart — for, as Men see thro’ different Optics, and are induced by the reflecting faculties of the Mind, to use different means to attain the same end; the Author of the Address, should have had more charity, than to mark for Suspicion, the Man who should recommend Moderation and longer forbearance — or, in other words, who should not think as he thinks, and act as he advises. But he had another plan in view, in which candor and liberality of Sentiment, regard to justice, and love of Country, have no part; and he was right, to insinuate the darkest suspicion, to effect the blackest designs.
That the Address is drawn with great art, and is designed to answer the most insidious purposes. That it is calculated to impress the Mind, with an idea of premeditated injustice in the Sovereign power of the United States, and rouse all those resentments which must unavoidably flow from such a belief. That the secret Mover of this Scheme (whoever he may be) intended to take advantage of the passions, while they were warmed by the recollection of past distresses, without giving time for cool, deliberative thinking, & that composure of Mind which is so necessary to give dignity & stability to measures, is rendered too obvious, by the mode of conducting the business, to need other proof than a reference to the proceeding.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1780s, The Newburgh Address (1783)

Love, Men, Secret, Justice

“What is art but a way of seeing?”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Thomas Berger, in Being Invisible (1967)
Misattributed

Way

“[W]e ought not to reject the ancient Art, as if it were not, and had not been properly founded, because it did not attain accuracy in all things, but rather, since it is capable of reaching to the greatest exactitude by reasoning, to receive it and admire its discoveries, made from a state of great ignorance, and as having been well and properly made, and not from chance.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

p, 125
Ancient Medicine

Chance

“When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 54.

“Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium.”
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio.

Horace book Epistles

Book II, epistle i, lines 156–157
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

“The arts (painting, poetry, etc.) are not just these. Eating, drinking, walking are also arts; every act is an art.”

César Vallejo (1892–1938) Peruvian writer

Las artes (pintura, poesía, etc.) no son solo éstas. Artes son también comer, beber, caminar: todo acto es un arte.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 60

Drink, Painting

“Instructors can impart only a fraction of the teaching. It is through your own devoted practice that the mysteries of the Art of Peace are brought to life.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)

Life, Peace

“A sort of egotistical self-evaluation is unavoidable in those joys in which erudition and art mingle and in which aesthetic pleasure may become more acute, but not remain as pure.”

Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French novelist, critic, and essayist

Preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-04503-4, p. 53

Pleasure, Joy

“I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! Oh come,
Make once more my heart thy home.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 8 Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/17889 (1821)

Love, Life, Home, Light

“Wagner’s art is the most sensational self-portrayal and self-critique of German nature that it is possible to conceive.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Suffering and Greatness of Richard Wagner (1933)

Nature

“And not only does one not seize at once and retain an impression of works that are really great, but even in the content of any such work (as befell me in the case of Vinteuil’s sonata) it is the least valuable parts that one at first perceives… Less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Et non seulement on ne retient pas tout de suite les œuvres vraiment rares, mais même au sein de chacune de ces œuvres-là, et cela m'arriva pour la Sonate de Vinteuil, ce sont les parties les moins précieuses qu'on perçoit d'abord... Moins décevants que la vie, ces grands chefs-d'œuvre ne commencent pas par nous donner ce qu'ils ont de meilleur.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919), Ch. I: "Madame Swann at Home"

Life, Disappointment, Parting

“Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.”

Hippocrates (-460–-370 BC) ancient Greek physician

Ὁ βίος βραχὺς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρὴ, ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξὺς, ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερὴ, ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή. Δεῖ δὲ οὐ μόνον ἑωυτὸν παρέχειν τὰ δέοντα ποιεῦντα, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν νοσέοντα, καὶ τοὺς παρεόντας, καὶ τὰ ἔξωθεν.
1:1, Variant translation: Art is long; life is short; opportunity is fleeting; judgement is difficult; experience is deceitful. Compare: "The lyfe so short, the craft so long to lerne", Geoffrey Chaucer, The Assembly of Fowles, line 1.
Aphorisms

Life, Decision

“It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato,: PHP III 8.35.1-11 translation: De Lacy, Phillip (1978- 1984) Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Berlin. p. 233; cited in: Christopher Jon Elliott. "Galen, Rome and the Second Sophistic." p. 147-8.

Life, Truth, Books, Exercises

“You listeners, the ones who found me first are, I believe, the future of great art thinkers. Because anyone that's found me now I really think is grabbing on to the ideas that I have, more than anything. It's about the music but it's also about the story. So thank you guys for loving and reading the story and being as into it and as passionate as I am.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Interview with DJ Ron Slomowicz at About.com http://dancemusic.about.com/od/artistshomepages/a/LadyGagaInt_2.htm

Love, Music, Guy, Idea

“Passing over the other arts in silence, I shall speak briefly of that which concerns the health of mankind; indeed, of all the arts the genius of man has discovered it is by far the most beneficial and of prime necessity, although difficult and laborious.”

Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) early anatomist

De fabrica, quoted in O'Malley 1964, p. 317

Health, Silence

“Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity that every student undergo a thorough training in the workshops of all branches of the crafts.”

Walter Gropius (1883–1969) German architect (1883-1969) and founder of the Bauhaus School

As quoted in Paul Klee, 1879-1940 (2000) by w:Susanna Partsch, p. 47

Sense, Training

“For love she wist was weak without those arts,
And slow; for jealousy is Cupid's food;
For the swift steed runs not so fast alone,
As when some strain, some strive him to outgone.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Alfin s'invecchia amore
Senza quest' arti, e divien pigro e lento,
Quasi destrier che men veloce corra,
Se non ha chilo segua, o chi 'l precorra.
Canto V, stanza 70 (tr. Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Love, Jealousy, Food

“The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002) Various interviews

Truth, Way

“Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. It is dreadful to see how our lives—which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure—rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased … I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the [direction of empathy for misery] with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i. e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Pleasure, Way, Feeling, Soul

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Love, Life, Happiness, People

“The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

As quoted in obituary '"Reinhold Niebuhr Is Dead; Protestant Theologian, 78" by Alden Whitman in The New York Times (2 June 1971) http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/niebuhr.pdf

Men

“I met the New Passion, then, as democracy, as political enlightenment and the humanitarianism of happiness. I understood its efforts to be toward the politicization of everything ethos; its aggressiveness and doctrinary intolerance consisted – I experienced them personally – in its denial and slander of every nonpolitical ethos. “Mankind” as humanitarian internationalism; “reason” and “virtue” as the radical republic; intellect as a thing between a Jacobin club and Freemasonry; art as social literature and maliciously seductive rhetoric in the service of social “desirability”; here we have the New Passion in its purest political form as I saw it close up. I admit that this is a special, extremely romanticized form of it.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

Reflections of a Non-Political Man http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=946 [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)

Happiness, Democracy, Literature, Effort

“Only the actual conception of the divine nature changes according to the different ideas of perfection which prevail in particular ages and nations. The gods of the remoter ages of Greece and Rome, and those worshipped by our own earliest forefathers, were simply ideals of bodily strength and prowess. As the idea of sensuous beauty arose and gradually became refined, the sensuous personification of beauty was exalted to the throne of deity; and hence arose what we might call the religion of art. When men ascended from the sensuous to the purely spiritual, from the beautiful to the good and true, the sum of all moral and intellectual perfection became the object of their adoration, and religion became the province of philosophy.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 7

Men, God, Age, Religion

“Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Source: * The New York Exhibition of Independent Artists ** The Craftsman ** 1910 ** https://books.google.com/books?id=Af84fBmzmVYC&pg=PA423&lpg=PA423&dq=Art+cannot+be+separated+from+life.#v=onepage&q=Art%20cannot%20be%20separated%20from%20life.&f=false.

Life

“Working to timings and synchronising your musical thoughts with the film can be stimulating rather than restrictive. Scoring is a limitation but like any limitation is can be made to work for you. Verdi, except for a handful of pieces, worked best when he was 'turned on' by a libretto. The most difficult problem in music is form, and in a film you already have this problem solved for you. You are presented with a basic structure, a blueprint, and provided the film has been well put together, well edited, it often suggests its own rhythms and tempo. The quality of the music is strictly up to the composer. Many people seem to assume that because film music serves the visual it must be something of secondary value. Well, the function of any art is to serve a purpose in society. For many years, music and painting served religion. The thing to bear in mind is that film is the youngest of the arts, and that scoring is the youngest of the music arts. We have a great deal of development ahead of us.”

Jerry Goldsmith (1929–2004) film composer

ibid., p. 209

People, Religion, Music, Problem

“Art consists in making others feel what we feel.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 231
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A arte consiste em fazer os outros sentir o que nós sentimos.

Feeling

“Oh, no. Not me, not Marshall. You want to see Marshall? I'll show you Marshall! I tried to show you art, but you just pick it apart.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Don't Push Me", Get Rich or Die Tryin (2003).
2000s

“Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together.”

Alvar Aalto (1898–1976) Finnish architect and designer

Alvar Aalto, quoted in: Bruce Newlands The Art of Building http://www.cicstart.org/userfiles/file/IR9_28-38.pdf, cicstart.org

Life, Way, Thinking

“And he turned his mind to unknown arts.”
Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes.

Ovid Metamorphoses

Book VIII, line 188
Metamorphoses (Transformations)

“That is the marvel of true art, that no one has yet found a way to commercialize it.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Way

“[F]rom the earliest periods of time [man] alone has divided the empire of the world between him and Nature. …[H]e rather enjoys than possesses, and it is by constant and perpetual activity and vigilance that he preserves his advantage, for if those are neglected every thing languishes, changes, and returns to the absolute dominion of Nature. She resumes her power, destroys the operations of man; envelopes with moss and dust his most pompous monuments, and in the progress of time entirely effaces them, leaving man to regret having lost by his negligence what his ancestors had acquired by their industry. Those periods in which man loses his empire, those ages in which every thing valuable perishes, commence with war and are completed by famine and depopulation. Although the strength of man depends solely upon the union of numbers, and his happiness is derived from peace, he is, nevertheless, so regardless of his own comforts as to take up arms and to fight, which are never-failing sources of ruin and misery. Incited by insatiable avarice, or blind ambition, which is still more insatiable, he becomes callous to the feelings of humanity; regardless of his own welfare, his whole thoughts turn upon the destruction of his own species, which he soon accomplishes. The days of blood and carnage over, and the intoxicating fumes of glory dispelled, he beholds, with a melancholy eye, the earth desolated, the arts buried, nations dispersed, an enfeebled people, the ruins of his own happiness, and the loss of his real power.”

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788) French natural historian

Buffon's Natural History (1797) Vol. 10, pp. 340-341 https://books.google.com/books?id=respAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA340, an English translation of Histoire Naturelle (1749-1804).

War, Happiness, People, Age

“I am probably the least sensuous of all living beings; being almost exclusively visual and quasi-abstract in imagination, and tending to view and enjoy all things as a passive, detached, and sometimes remote spectator. Those arts which appeal most to the ideational imagination—the sense of drama, pageantry, historic flux, collective organisation, or escape from the natural limitations of time, space, and natural law—are undoubtedly those which appeal chiefly to me. Even my strong love of architectural and decorative beauty is probably largely dependent upon the historical bearings of the forms and motifs in which I delight. I am not wholly insensible to abstract form, but seem to relish the associative element in art more instantly and acutely than the lyrical or mathematical element... I don't really revel in anything unless it reminds me of something else either real or visionary—unless it opens up visual avenues of linked pseudo-recollections leading to sensations of ego-expansion and liberation... usually bringing in the element of time, somehow based on the past, and harbouring hints of an elusive, intangible kind of adventurous expectancy.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Virgil Finlay (25 September 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 310
Non-Fiction, Letters

Love, Law, Beauty, Imagination

“Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms, well then think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affects us more or less intensely.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
Richard Friedenthal, (1963, pp. 257-258).
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35

Idea, Thinking, Appearance, Winter

“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Speech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill. http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/S/0001/S.0001.192306070006.html

Thinking

“A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.”

Helen Rowland (1875–1950) American journalist

Bachelors
A Guide to Men (1922)

Love, Women, Making love

“Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Three (23 April 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life, Game, Solitude, Reading

“Dilettantes have not achieved anything lasting even in the applied arts. But they have rendered some service to the highest of all disciplines: philosophy. Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues are proof of this.”

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer

Dilettanten haben nicht einmal in einer sekundären Kunst etwas Bleibendes geleistet, sich aber verdient gemacht um die höchste aller Wissenschaften, die Philosophie. Den Beweis dafür liefern: Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 55.

“I have always advocated that a woman had as much sense as a man, or she would not have been called to be his help-meet and companion. A question: What man wants to spend his days with a woman fool? I think she is in as much danger of spending her days with a fool as he is. I opened wide the doors of my first school for ladies. Another and a much greater reason I will offer and emphasize. Why not elevate our sister’s mentality, qualify her to fill all places of trust and honor, place her hand and head with the skilled arts. I know no reason she should not study anatomy, physiology, chemistry and all the machinery and laws of life… I will say by way of encouragement that all ladies who have graduated from this school and gone out in the world, have done well financially, and are made the guests of the best society in the land. They are well received and honored as ladies, and well paid for their skill. Places are open and ready for all that have a diploma from this school. And for the first time I will say, come on and qualify yourselves to take your places of usefulness. Do your part well, and a feast awaits you.”

Andrew Taylor Still (1828–1917) Founder of Osteopathic Medicine

Still, A. T., Dr. A.T. Still's Department, Journal of Osteopathy, p. 413-414. https://www.atsu.edu/museum/subscription/pdfs/JournalofOsteopathyVol4No91898February.pdf/ Note: The first ASO class had 5 women members..

Life, World, School, Law

“Life is earnest, art is gay.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Prologue
Wallenstein (1798), Prologue - Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp)

Life

“In mathematics there is a certain way of seeking the truth, a way which Plato is said first to have discovered and which was called "analysis" by Theon and was defined by him as "taking the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth which is uncontested"; so, on the other hand, "synthesis" is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conclusion and comprehension of the thing sought." And although the ancients set forth a twofold analysis, the zetetic and the poristic, to which Theon's definition particularly refers, it is nevertheless fitting that there be established also a third kind, which may be called rhetic or exegetic, so that there is a zetetic art by which is found the equation or proportion between the magnitude that is being sought and those that are given, a poristic art by which from the equation or proportion the truth of the theorem set up is investigated, and an exegetic art by which from the equation set up or the proportion, there is produced the magnitude itself which is being sought. And thus, the whole threefold analytic art, claiming for itself this office, may be defined as the science of right finding in mathematics…. the zetetic art does not employ its logic on numbers—which was the tediousness of the ancient analysts—but uses its logic through a logistic which in a new way has to do with species [of number]…”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

Source: In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591), Ch. 1 as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934-1936) Appendix.

Truth, Way, Mathematics, Science

“There's no other art form in the world that affects me more.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

On acting http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6286519.stm (22 January 2007)

World

“The aim of my work: The study of nature, the love of nature's art, and the need to express what one feels in one's heart.”

Émile Gallé (1846–1904) French glass artist and cabinetmaker

Ecrits pour l'art, ed. Henrietta Galle Paris 1908/Marseille (1980).

Love, Feeling, Nature, Study

“If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that—in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Quoted in Frankenberry The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words (2008), p. 336

Love, Way, Star, Nature

“Every great work of art should be considered like any work of nature. First of all from the point of view of its aesthetic reality and then not just from its development and the mastery of its creation but from the standpoint of what has moved and agitated its creator.”

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) Italian painter and sculptor

Attributed without citation at The Art Story http://www.theartstory.org/artist-modigliani-amedeo.htm.

Nature, Reality

“[Freedom] is the greatest of political goods. I do not say freedom is the greatest of all goods: the best things come from within—they are such things as creative art, and love, and thought. Such things can be helped or hindered by political conditions, but not actually produced by them; and freedom is, both in itself and in its relation to these other goods the best thing that political and economic conditions can secure.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918), Ch. V: Government and Law, p. 75

Love, Freedom, Help

“What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions, 2010

Pain, Way, Problem

“All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"Some Notes on Caravaggio" (Nimbus 1956).

Painting

“The object of art — like every other product — creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 12.

Beauty

“I think that the loss of the house call has been the biggest blow to the art of medicine in this century. Not only has the patient lost this precious attention, but the physician has not found a replacement for the lost intimacy.”

Patch Adams (1945) Physician, activist, diplomat, author

Source: House Calls: How we can all heal the world one visit at a time (1998), p. xi

Thinking, Loss, Housing

“O great and wonderful Lord our God, thou only light of the eyes, open, I implore thee, the eyes of my heart, and of others my fellow-creatures, that we may truly understand and contemplate thy wondrous works. And the more thoroughly we comprehend them, the more may our minds be affected in the contemplation with pious reverence and profound devotion. Who is not struck with awe in beholding thy all-powerful will completely efficacious throughout every part of the creation? It is by this same sovereign and irresistible will, that whom and when thou pleasest thou bringest low and liftest up, killest and makest alive. How intense and how unbounded is thy love to me, O Lord! whereas my love, how feeble and remiss! my gratitude, how cold and inconstant! Far be it from thee that thy love should even resemble mine; for in every kind of excellence thou art consummate. O thou who fillest heaven and earth, why fillest thou not this narrow heart? O human soul, low, abject, and miserable, whoever thou art, if thou be not fully replenished with the love of so great a good, why dost thou not open all thy doors, expand all thy folds, extend all thy capacity, that, by the sweetness of love so great, thou mayest be wholly occupied, satiated, and ravished; especially since, little as thou art, thou canst not be satisfied with the love of any good inferior to the One supreme? Speak the word, that thou mayest become my God and most enviable in mine eyes, and it shall instantly be so, without the possibility of failure. What can be more efficacious to engage the affection than preventing love? Most gracious Lord, by thy love thou hast prevented me, wretch that I am, who had no love for thee, but was at enmity with my Maker and Redeemer. I see, Lord, that it is easy to say and to write these things, but very difficult to execute them. Do thou, therefore, to whom nothing is difficult, grant that I may more easily practise these things with my heart than utter them with my lips. Open thy liberal hand, that nothing may be easier, sweeter, or more delightful to me, than to be employed in these things. Thou, who preventest thy servants with thy gracious love, whom dost thou not elevate with the hope of finding thee?”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

Sample of Bradwardine devotional writing quoted by James Burnes, The Church of England Magazine under the superintendence of clergymen of the United Church of England and Ireland Vol. IV (January to June 1838)

Love, God, Hope, Soul

“People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

People, Question

“These rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience — the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Understanding, Science

“Art lies because it's social.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., p. 232
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A arte mente porque é social

“My afflictions belong to me and my art - they have become one with me. Without illness and anxiety, I would have been a rudderless ship... My art is really a voluntary confession and an attempt to explain to myself my relationship with life - it is, therefore, actually a sort of egoism, but I am constantly hoping that through this I can help others achieve clarity.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

As quoted in 'From my rotting body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity', Potter P. Emerg Infect Dis, 2011
after 1930

Life, Hope, Affliction, Help

“Sweet hymns shall be my chant and woven songs,
For Thou art all for which my spirit longs--
To be within the shadow of Thy hand
And all Thy mystery to understand.
The while Thy glory is upon my tongue,
My inmost heart with love of thee is wrung,
So though Thy mighty marvels I proclaim,
'Tis songs of love wherewith I greet Thy name.”

Yehuda he-Hasid (1140–1217) German philosopher

Shir Hakovod, trans. from the Hebrew by Israel Zangwill

Love, Understanding, Heart

“Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain.
Les peintres cubistes (1913), reprinted in Oeuvres en prose complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1991) vol. 2, p. 11; translation from Lionel Abel (trans.) The Cubist Painters (New York: Wittenborn, 1949) p. 13.

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (June 24, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

Way

“An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him. Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Communication

“The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art. The square is a living, regal infant. The first step of pure creation in art.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote in 'From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting', Kazimir Malevich, November 1916
1910 - 1920

“The art of war consists in being always able, even with an inferior army, to have stronger forces than the enemy at the point of attack or the point which is attacked.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

War

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

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

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

“With the right of the scientist to investigate most aspects of the material universe, most persons will agree; but there are some who have questioned the applicability of scientific methods to an investigation of human sexual behavior…. It is as though the dietician and biochemist were denied the right to analyze foods and the processes of nutrition, because the cooking and proper serving of food may be rated a fine art, and because the eating of certain foods has been considered a matter for religious regulation.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

page 8
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)

Food, Behavior, Question, Universe

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Tel Quel (1943)

People, Parting

“They did to others that which they would not they should do to them—that grand principle of immorality upon which rests the whole art of war.”

Jules Verne book From the Earth to the Moon

Ils faisaient à autrui ce qu'ils ne voulaient pas qu'on leur fît, principe immoral sur lequel repose tout l’art de la guerre.
Tr. Walter James Miller (1978)
Variant: They did unto others what they would not have others do unto them, an immoral principle that is the basic premise of the art of war.
Source: From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Ch. X: One Enemy v. Twenty-five Millions of Friends (Charles Scribner's Sons "Uniform Edition", 1890, p. 50)

War

“A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master. In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks; politically, I criticize them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their own ideals.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Preface
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)

Way, Feeling, Departure, Thinking

“God, our Father, has given us the life and the art of healing to protect and maintain it.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)

Life, God

“Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Paris Review interview (1956)

Life, Literature

“Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sir Jadunath Sarkar Shivaji and His Times, 1919, p. 406

Literature, Tree, Dead

“As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 9
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Truth, Imagination, Fashion, Nature

“Human behavior is predictable, but, as in physical science, accurate prediction hinges on the correctness of underlying theoretical assumptions. There is, in fact, no prediction without theory; all managerial decisions and actions rest on assumptions about behavior. If we adopt the posture of the ostrich with respect to our assumptions under the mistaken idea that we are thus “being ‘practical,” or that “management is an art,” our progress with respect to the human side of enterprise will indeed be slow. Only as we examine and test our theoretical assumptions can we hope to make them more adequate, to remove inconsistencies, and thus to improve our ability to predict.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 11 (2006; 13)

Hope, Behavior, Idea, Decision

“The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

Men

“Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals — for all that is admirable in man is the artificial product of special breeding. We advocate the preservation of conditions favourable to the growth of beautiful things — imposing palaces, beautiful cities, elegant literature, resposeful art and music, and a physically select human type such as only luxury and a pure racial strain can produce. Thus we oppose democracy, if only because it would retard the development of a handsome Nordic breed. We realise that all conceptions of justice and ethics are mere prejudices and illusions — there is no earthly reason why the masses should not be kept down for the benefit of the strong, since every man is for himself in the last analysis.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Justice, Beauty, Music, Democracy