Art quotes
22.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside art — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up someair in a spacious apartment, and warms that.... Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts."
"Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance."
"We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art...what we are talking about and the only way to know is to have lived and loved and cursed and floundered and enjoyed and suffered. I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace."
"It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact, Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent, subtle and sophisticated people, with organized societies and great art."
"The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life."
"This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will."
"The Besicovitch style is architectural. He builds out of simply elements a delicate and complicated architectural structure, usually with a hierarchical plan, and then, when the building is finished, the completed structure leads by simple arguments to an unexpected conclusion. Every Besicovitch proof is a work of art, as carefully constructed as a Bach fugue."
"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."
"When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life."
"Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all. That, of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary; still, while I cannot go quite so far as that, I do maintain, and I believe I am right, that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art until practice and experience shall give them that confidence, elegance and precision which alone can make the accomplishment graceful and profitable."
"Blessed be the inventor of photography! I set him above even the inventor of chloroform! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has ''cast up'' in my time or is like to -- this art by which even the ''poor'' can possess themselves of tolerable likenesses of their absent dear ones. And mustn't it be acting favorably on the morality of the country?"
"This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother."
"Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself."
"Fashion is one of the most beautiful forms of art we have. It's a form of art that every person gets to possess and create for themselves."
"I'm kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heroes are artists and writers."
"I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences."
"Wherever you are, be there. Lifestyle is not something we do; it is something we experience. And until we learn to be there, we will never master the art of living well."
"Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity."
"The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them."
"I had toward the poetic art a peculiar relation which was only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had molded it"
