“When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed.”

— Paul Klee

Diary entry (December 1904), # 583, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
1903 - 1910

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When looking at any significant work of art, remember that a more significant one probably has had to be sacrificed." by Paul Klee?

Paul Klee 104

German Swiss painter 1879–1940

Related quotes

“Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

“Every act is political and, whether one is conscious of it or not, the presentation of one's work is no exception. Any production, any work of art is social, has a political significance. We are obliged to pass over the sociological aspect of the proposition before us due to lack of space and consideration of priority among the questions to be analysed.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

" Beware!" ("Mise en garde!") http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/buren1.pdf, in Konzeption/Conception, translated by Charles Harrison and Peter Townsend (Leverkusen: Stadtischer Museum, 1969.
1960s

“Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Source: Under the Glacier

“Self-interest must be sacrificed if you wish to keep your marriage alive, or to keep your significant one attracted to your attributes.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones.”

P. D. Ouspensky book Tertium Organum

Tertium Organum (1922)
Context: Generally speaking, the significance of the indirect results may very often be of more importance than the significance of direct ones. And since we are able to trace how the energy of love transforms itself into instincts, ideas, creative forces on different planes of life; into symbols of art, song, music, poetry; so can we easily imagine how the same energy may transform itself into a higher order of intuition, into a higher consciousness which will reveal to us a marvelous and mysterious world.
In all living nature (and perhaps also in that which we consider as dead) love is the motive force which drives the creative activity in the most diverse directions.