Quotes about art

page 9

“All right. I’m not opposed to reality imitating art if it doesn’t get in the way.”

“This natural life of ours is but a pilgrimage from this wandering world, and exile from our own country: that is to say, a way from all misery to thee (Lord) which art our whole felicity. And lest the pleasantness and commodity of this life should withdraw us from the going to the right and speedy way to thee, thou dost stir and provoke us forward, and as yet ward prick us with thorns, to the intent we should covet a quiet rest, and end of our journey. Therefore sickness, weepings, sorrow, mourning, and in conclusion all adversities be unto us as spurs; with the which we being dull horses, or rather very asses, are forced not to remain long in this transitory way. Wherefore Lord, give us grace to forget this wayfaring journey, and to remember our proper and true country. And if thou do add a weight of adversity, add thereunto strength, that we shall not be overcome with that burden: but having our minds continually erected and lift up to thee, we may be able to strongly bear it. Lord! all things be thine; therefore do with all things, without any exception, as shall seem convenient to thine unsearchable wisdom. And give us grace never to will but as thou wilt. So be it.”

“However many things we may have done, we are yet to a certain degree fresh for that which we are going to begin. Who, on the contrary, would not be stupified if he were to listen to the same teacher of any art, whatever it might be, through the whole day? But by change a person will be recruited, as is the case with respect to food, by varieties of which the stomach is re-invigorated and is fed with several sorts less unsatisfactorily than with one.”

“Art imitates Nature, and Necessity is the Mother of Invention.”

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

“Art Nouveau was coil-envy.”

“Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.”

“In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.”

“But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its being and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.”

“O great creator of being
grant us one more hour to
perform our art
and perfect our lives”

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.”

“There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”

“I have much to teach you. Come and learn the art of war from the one who invented it. (Takeshi)”

“A work of art really is above all an adventure of the mind.”

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.”

“All great art is a form of complaint”

“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”

“Education is the art of making man ethical”

“I have found my voice again and the art of using it…”

“Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want.”

“In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.”

“The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.”

“The assaying of tea is an art and not a science. It is the man, and not his instruments, which is the most important.”

“Books are, let's face it, better than everything else. If we played Cultural Fantasy Boxing League, and made books go fifteen rounds in the ring against the best that any other art form had to offer, then books would win pretty much every time.”

“Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”

“Art? You just do it. MARTIN RITT”

“Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

“To do a dull thing with style-now that's what I call art.”

“What art thou Faustus, but a man condemned to die?”

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”

“If it sells, it's art.”

“His judgement demonstrates that one can be a genius and understand nothing of an art that is not one's own.”

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.”

“Expectation. is the true soul of art. If you can give a man more than he expects, then he will laud you his entire life. If you can create an air of anticipation and feed it properly, you will succeed.”

“Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it.”

“Where I am always thou art. Thy image lives within my heart.”

“The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.”

“It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.”

“Art is as useful as bread.”

“Art is seduction, not rape.”

“A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.”

“escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art.
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.”

“We… believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.”

“Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)”

“The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour -- ha ha ha ha ha -- they'll take you away, man. You can't.”

“He taught us the art of unqualified love. How to give it, how to accept it. Where there is that, most other pieces fall into place.”

“There are only three forms of high art: the symphony, the illustrated children's book and the board game.”

“It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.”

“Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.”

“Donner: Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”

“We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art--we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.”

“Fine art is something wonderful that's left long into the future… eternal beauty.”

“For me, Art is the restoration of order. It may discuss all sort of terrible things, but there must be satisfaction at the end. A little bit of hunger, but also satisfaction.”

“As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?”

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.”

“I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.”

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

“Imagination without reason produces impossible monsters; with reason, it becomes the mother of the arts, and the source of its marvels.”

“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”

“Most people in America think Art is a man's name.”

“A second chance—that’s the delusion. There never was to be but one. We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.”

“Pain, thou art not an evil”

“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.”

“Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.”

“The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every single damn thing matters! Only we don't realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don't realize that's a lie.”

“The Symbol of all Art is the Prism. The goal is destructive. To break up the white light of objective realism into the secret glories it contains.”

“you will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf
know you could tumble at any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

--The Art of Disappearing”

“Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.”

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. To be in the window and watch people being sent to concentration camps or being attacked in the street and do nothing, that's being dead.”

“Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”

“Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.”

“You're lips are bloody.' He seized my face in both hands and kissed me. It's hard not to respond when a master of the art of kissing is laying one on you.”

“The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible.”

“I don't know what the definition of pornography is and nobody else does either. Pornography is somebody else's erotica that you don't like. People are interested in their own sexuality and they've always reflected it in their art. End of story.”

“Art is either revolution or plagiarism”

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

“Your own tactic is to train yourself in the art of becoming enigmatic to everybody. My young friend, suppose there was no one who troubld himself to guess your riddle--what joy, then, would you have in it?”

“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”

“I am sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!
How beautiful thou art!”

“I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.”

“Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.”

“We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth”

“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.”

“In art as in love, instinct is enough.”

“Cookery means…English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality; it means the knowledge of all fruits and herbs and balms and spices; it means carefulness, inventiveness, and watchfulness.”

“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.”

“It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

“Tea… is a religion of the art of life.”

“The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.”

“You gotta know when to be lazy. Done correctly, it's an art form that benefits everyone.”

“We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.”

“Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.”

“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.”

“Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can using only their hands and feet make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.”