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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"When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist, or an idealist; a Christian, or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last."
"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest."
"I just don't think it honors God to create mediocre art."
"Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance."
"All art is but imitation of nature."
"The art of living your life has a lot to do with getting over loss. The less the past haunts you, the better."
"Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence- the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life."
"Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge."
"The real art is knowing what to leave out, not what to put in."
"What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy."
"The essential factor of military success is speed, that is taking advantage of others' unpreparedness or lack of foresight, their failure to catch up, going by routes they do not expect, attacking where they are not on guard. This you cannot accomplish with hesitation."
"If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant."
"One who sets the entire army in motion to chase an advantage will not attain it."
"Fighting with a large army under your command is nowise different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals."
"Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities."
"Other conditions being equal, if one force is hurled against another ten times its size, the result will be the flight of the former."
"An army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so an army avoids strength and strikes weakness."
"For me, art is a more trustworthy expression of God than religion."
"Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well."
"The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call."
