"I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself."
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Art quotes
Art
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Art quotes (page 123 of 1107)
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"Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken."
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"It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is."
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"The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous."
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"If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you."
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"Art is a lie that makes us realise truth ... that is given us to understand."
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"I feel that when I am painting, it is a form of worship. I see how wonderful nature is and how wonderful art is... and by trying to produce these works of art, I feel that I am just showing my appreciation of these creations."
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"Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity."
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"The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment."
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"The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind."
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"I can't bear art that you can walk round and admire. A book should be either a bandit or a rebel or a man in the crowd."
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"I have no duty to be anyone's Friend and no man in the world has a duty to be mine. No claims, no shadow of necessity. Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."
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"Keep to yourself the final touches of your art."
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"Ask yourself what problem you have right now. Not next year, tomorrow or five minutes from now. You can always cope with the now, but you can never cope with the future. Nor do you have to. The answer, the strength and the right action will be there when you need it. Not before or after."
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"When a building is as good as that one, f#*@ the art."
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"Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!"
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"A Locanian having plucked all the feathers off from a nightingale and seeing what a little body it had, "surely," quoth he, "thou art all voice and nothing else."
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"One man cannot practice many arts with success."
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"Art has no end but its own perfection."
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"Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly."
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