"Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences."
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Art quotes
Art
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Art quotes (page 291 of 1107)
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"Great art is deeply ordered. Even if within the order there may be enormously instinctive and accidental things, nevertheless they come out of a desire for ordering and for returning fact onto the nervous system in a more violent way."
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"All authority must be out of a man's self, turned . . . either upon an art, or upon a man."
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"Painting gave meaning to my life which without it would not have had"
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"They are the best physicians, who being great in learning most incline to the traditions of experience, or being distinguished in practice do not reflect the methods and generalities of art."
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"I think that one of the things is that, if you are going to decide to be a painter, you have got to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself. I think another thing is to be able to find subjects which really absorb you to try and do. I feel that without a subject you automatically go back into decoration because you haven't got the subject which is always eating into you to bring it back - and the greatest art always returns you to the vulnerability of the human situation."
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"I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't in fact know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do."
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"The nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom."
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"Think of the universal substance, of which thou has a very small portion; and of universal time, of which a short and indivisible interval has been assigned to thee; and of that which is fixed by destiny, and how small a part of it thou art"
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"Nature in no case cometh short of art, for the arts are copiers of natural forms."
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"Continuously thou wilt look at human things as smoke and nothing at all; especially if thou reflectest at the same time, that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite duration of time. But thou, in what a brief space of time is thy existence? And why art thou not content to pass through this short time in an orderly way?"
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"Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse."
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"The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art."
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"When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself. For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion."
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"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, in so far as it stands ready against the accidental and the unforeseen, and is not apt to fall."
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"It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced."
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"Let every man practice the art that he knows best."
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"It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life."
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"Let art, then, imitate nature, find what she desires, and follow as she directs. For in invention nature is never last, education never first; rather the beginnings of things arise from natural talent, and ends are reached by discipline."
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"For just as some women are said to be handsome though without adornment, so this subtle manner of speech, though lacking in artificial graces, delights us."
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