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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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all."
"I like to convey the idea that art is important in everyday life."
"The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can clarify in paint."
"What is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art"
"Art is the highest task and the proper metaphysical activity of this life."
"... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live."
"Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art, you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is."
"If you can create a reality that is entirely fictitious, it doesn't owe anything to this stuff out here, but you interact with it on your own terms. I mean, if you took it to the point where finally you get, say, tactile feedback, so you were wired in in terms of the whole nervous system. The sensorium. You would have the ultimate art form. I mean, any painter would want it, any filmmaker would want access to it you know, any musician would want access to it. It would eliminate the need for the divisions between what we describe as the arts, converting the whole thing to experience."
"The purpose of art is to bring people into presence."
"In my view, The Temple of Man is the most important work of scholarship of this century. R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz finally proves the existence of the legendary 'sacred science' of the Ancients and systematically demonstrates its modus operandi. It was this great science-based upon an intimate and exact knowledge of cosmic principles-that fused art, religion, science, and philosophy into one coherent whole and sustained Ancient Egypt for three thousand years."
"I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well."
"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."
"It [music] has an awakening function. Life is a rhythm. Art is an organization of rhythms. Music is a fundamental art that touches our will system. In Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea he speaks of music as the sound that awakens the will. The rhythm of the music awakens certain life rhythms, ways of living and experiencing life. So it's an awakener of life."
"The excellence of every Art is its intensity."
"All discoveries in art and science result from an accumulation of errors."
"If men were able to be convinced that art is a precise advance knowledge of how to cope with the psychic and social consequences of the next technology, would they all become artist? Or would they begin a careful translation of new art forms into social navigation charts? I am curious to know what would happem if art were suddenly seen for what it is, namely, exact information of how to rearrange one's psyche in order to anticipate the next blow from our own extended faculties."
"In the end, it all comes down to the art of breathing."
"The heart of religion lies in its personal pronouns."
"A beautiful thing never gives so much pain as does failing to hear and see it."
"True art is made noble and religious by the mind producing it."
