“Art is apotheosis; often, the complaint of beauty.”

“The complaints of the privileged are too often confused with the voice of the masses.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

“The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye…”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

“Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“And as the ideal in the whole of Nature moves in an infinite process toward an Absolute Perfection, we may say that art is in strict truth the apotheosis of Nature. Art is thus at once the exaltation of the natural toward its destined supernatural perfection, and the investiture of the Absolute Beauty with the reality of natural existence. Its work is consequently not a means to some higher end, but is itself a final aim; or, as we may otherwise say, art is its own end. It is not a mere recreation for man, a piece of by-play in human life, but is an essential mode of spiritual activity, the lack of which would be a falling short of the destination of man. It is itself part and parcel of man's eternal vocation.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

“In art economy is always beauty.”

Henry James book The Altar of the Dead

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“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