“… a genuine work of art, can never be false, nor can it be discredited through the lapse of time, for it does not present an opinion but the thing itself.”
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Arthur Schopenhauer 261
German philosopher 1788–1860Related quotes
Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 136, "Criticism and Its Premises"
A Few Days in Athens (1822) Vol. II
Context: An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.
The Moviegoer (1961)
Source: Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community
Part IV, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
“A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.”
The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
Context: "Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"
If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much.
“We can never add more truth to what is true already, nor make that true which is false.”
p, 125
The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
