"M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull."
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Art quotes
Art
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Art quotes (page 287 of 1107)
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"In art, the public accept what has been, because they cannot alter it, not because they appreciate it. They swallow their classics whole, and never taste them."
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"If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it."
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"The proper school to learn art is not life but art"
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"There is only good art and mediocre art."
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"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature."
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"That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to, that is to say unless we are content to be less than men."
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"Art should never be popular."
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"Fashion rests upon folly. Art rests upon law. Fashion is ephemeral. Art is eternal. Indeed what is a fashion really? A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months! It is quite clear that were it beautiful and rational we would not alter anything that combined those two rare qualities. And wherever dress has been so, it has remained unchanged in law and principle for many hundred years."
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"She has form," he said to himself, as he walked away through the grove - "that cannot be denied to her; but has she got feeling? I am afraid not. In fact, she is like most artists; she is all style, without any sincerity. She would not sacrifice herself for others. She thinks merely of music, and everybody knows that arts are selfish. Still, it must be admitted that she has some beautiful notes in her voice. What a pity it is that they do not mean anything, or do any practical good."
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"It is a pity to make a mystery out of what should most easily be understood. There is nothing occult about the thought that all things maybe made well or made ill. A work of art is a well-made thing - that is all. It may be a well-made statue of a well-made chair or a well-made book. Art is not a special sauce applied to ordinary cooking; it is the cooking itself that is good. Most simply and generally, Art may be thought of as "The Well Doing of What Needs Doing.""
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"The best one can say of modern creative art is that it is just a little less vulgar than reality."
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"Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices."
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"It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression."
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"Music is the perfect type of art."
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"Nature constantly imitates art."
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"That is the mission of art - to make us pause and look at a thing a second time."
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"Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes."
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"All bad art is the result of good intentions."
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"Politics is not a science, as the professors are apt to suppose. It is an art."
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