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Art quotes

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“The object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.” Charlie Chaplin, “My Autobiography” - 1964

“A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.” Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet” - 1929

“Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.” Thomas Carlyle, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History” - 1841

“No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.” Kurt Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse-Five” - 1969

“There is no nature which is inferior to art, for the arts imitate the nature of things.” Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations” - c. 170 - 180

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.” Henry Kissinger, “Diplomacy” - 1994

“She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated.” Gustave Flaubert, “Madame Bovary” - 1856

“Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“All art is quite useless.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“I'm sick of a system where the richest man gets the most beautiful girl if he wants her, where the artist without an income has to sell his talents to a button manufacturer.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “This Side of Paradise” - 1920

“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.” George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman” - 1903

“There is an art in lighting a fire. We have the liberal arts and we have the useful arts. This is one of the useful arts.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.” John Green, “The Fault in Our Stars” - 2012

“Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it...” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art.” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows, but it speaks of the thing itself.” Arthur Schopenhauer, “The World as Will and Representation” - 1819

“There is nothing so terrible as the pursuit of art by those who have no talent.” W. Somerset Maugham, “Of Human Bondage” - 1915

“They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“When man was being made, the Creator was a schoolmaster—His bag full of commandments and principles; but when He came to woman, He resigned His headmastership and turned artist, with only His brush and paint-box.” Rabindranath Tagore, “The Home and the World” - 1916

“There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics.” Mao Zedong, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung” - 1964

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.” Andy Warhol, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” - 1975

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he—for some reason— thinks it would be a good idea to give them.” Andy Warhol, “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol” - 1975

“In science, as in art, and, as I believe, in every other sphere of human activity, there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, but it is only in one or two of them. And, in scientific inquiry, at any rate, it is to that one or two that we...” Thomas Henry Huxley, “The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century” - 1887

“Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.” Bruce Lee, “Tao of Jeet Kune Do” - 1975

“Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.” John F. Kennedy, “Inaugural Address” - 20 January 1961

“Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride.” Frank Zappa, “The Real Frank Zappa Book” - 1989

“Paradox though it may seem—and paradoxes are always dangerous things—it is none the less true that Life imitates art far more than Art imitates life.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known.” Oscar Wilde, “The Soul of Man under Socialism” - 1891

“All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection;” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“What you have told me is quite a romance, a romance of art one might call it, and the worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.” Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” - 1890

“All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“For there is no art where there is no style, and no style where there is no unity, and unity is of the individual.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 1891

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Art” - 1841

Related topics

science life music happiness poetry beauty writing passion women wisdom death gift sacrifice truth God romance dance cooking feelings philosophy

Related authors

Oscar Wilde (10)
James Joyce (2)
Albert Einstein (2)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Andy Warhol (2)
George Bernard Shaw (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
John Green (1)
G. K. Chesterton (1)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1)
Thomas Carlyle (1)
Edith Wharton (1)
Arthur Schopenhauer (1)
W. Somerset Maugham (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
Carl Sagan (1)
Charlie Chaplin (1)
Marcus Aurelius (1)
Stephen King (1)
Rabindranath Tagore (1)

Related sources

The Picture of Dorian Gray (5)
Intentions (4)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (2)
The world as I see it (2)
Brave New World (2)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (2)
Man and Superman (1)
This Side of Paradise (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
What's Wrong with the World (1)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (1)
The Age of Innocence (1)
The World as Will and Representation (1)
Of Human Bondage (1)
Inaugural Address (1)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1)
Cosmos (1)
My Autobiography (1)
Meditations (1)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (1)