"If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally."
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Art quotes
Art
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Art quotes (page 188 of 1107)
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"No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted."
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"Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience."
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"Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those that have not known Thee; open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them, and saying, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life"--see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen."
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"What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery."
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"Producing perfection from imperfection is, after all, the highest of art forms."
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"Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed."
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"The art of life consists in taking each event which befalls us with a contented mind, confident of good. ... With this method ... rejoice always, though in the midst of sorrows, and possess all things, though destitute of everything."
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"Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns; it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies, they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm, the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air. I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song, for I know well that only words, that words alone, like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death."
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"People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure."
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"The business of art lies just in this, -- to make that understood and felt which, in the form of an argument, might be incomprehensible and inaccessible."
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"In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people."
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"Art is the uniting of the subjective with the objective, of nature with reason, of the unconscious with the conscious, and therefore art is the highest means of knowledge."
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"Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion... peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means - by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspections... It should be obtained by man's free and joyous activity."
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"The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal."
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"The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education and fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which is responsible for economic affairs. their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv and Miniplenty"
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"Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude."
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"The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration."
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"The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice."
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"Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject."
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