It is always a good sign when an artist can be hindered by trifles from exercising his art.
 Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation

add
Author Arthur Schopenhauer
Source The World as Will and Representation
Topic art artist
Date 1819
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40097/40097-h/40097-h.html

Context

“But just that which makes them so insensible to noise of every kind makes them also insensible to the beautiful in plastic art, and to deep thought or fine expression in literary art; in short, to all that does not touch their personal interests. The following remark of Lichtenberg's applies to the paralysing effect which noise has upon highly intellectual persons: “It is always a good sign when an artist can be hindered by trifles from exercising his art. F—— used to stick his fingers into sulphur if he wished to play the piano.... Such things do not [pg 199] interfere with the average mind;... it acts like a coarse sieve” (Vermischte Schriften, vol.” source