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 refining influence is the study of art, which is the science of beauty; and I find that every man values every scrap of knowledge in art, every observation of his own in it, every hint he has caught from another. For the laws of beauty are the beauty of beauty, and give the mind the same or a higher joy than the sight of it gives the senses. The study of art is of high value to the growth of the intellect."
"My opinion is that the best thing would be to work on till art lovers feel drawn toward it of their own accord, instead of having to praise or to explain it."
"Ah! My dear friend painting is to us what the music of Berlioz and Wagner was before us - a consolatory art for sore hearts! And yet there are only a few like you and me who feel it!!!"
"To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise."
"All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance."
"On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."
"And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all."
"Beauty plus pity -- that is the closest we can get to a definition of art."
"Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth."
"All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds."
"A defective voice will always preclude an artist from achieving the complete development of his art, however intelligent he may be.... The voice is an instrument which the artist must learn to use with suppleness and sureness, as if it were a limb."
"The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art."
"Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for."
"I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair."
"If it's physical pain, you just deal with it the best way you can. But if it's more emotional, I don't know. I just try my best to feel it, take it in, and just allow myself to go through whatever may actually come from it. And then a certain amount of it, you can use to transform it through art, which is the healthy way of dealing with it, as well."
"To persons uninstructed in natural history, their country or seaside stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall."
"I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice."
"Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains."
"I have always disliked the idea of an arts ghetto in which poetry is kept on a life-support system."
"The 2 master skills of life are: The Science of Achievement and The Art of Fulfillment."
