Art Quotes — page 43

Commerce creates wealth, and it is the foundation of the great state. Armies are raised and paid for to win, or to protect the countries' trade, or commerce. Ships are constructed, colonies established, inventions encouraged, governments …

It is not Wisdom, but Ignorance, which teaches men presumption; Genius may be sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.

As far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them, which had not heretofore been developed. As men, they ask nothing better than to be …

To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.

Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?

It is something gained when the colored man in any form can appear before a white audience

We have lost the old love of work, of work which kept itself company, which was fair weather and music in the heart, which found its reward in the doing, craving neither the flattery of vulgar eyes nor the gold of vulgar men.

Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art.

1953. Learn the art of Silence; the wise Man that holds his Tongue, says more than the Fool who speaks.

Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense.

The qualities called personal... and the ability to impart them, in greater or less degree, is the gage of genius in art.

Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless Art thou — let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness.

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

For my spirit hath left her earthly home And found a nobler dwelling, Where the music of light is that of life, And the starry harps are swelling.

On the death of these great men [Rembrandt, Ruysdael and Cuyp] Landscape rapidly declined; and during almost the whole of the succeeding century, little was produced.. .From this degraded and fallen state it is delightful to say that …

An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds …

It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then …

I hate singers, a miserable crew who think that music exists only in their own throats.

are not at all instructed in any Rules of Art. By which means when they come to make any Designs

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life.

Whatever question there may be of his [Thoreau's] talent, there can be none, I think, of his genius. It was a slim and crooked one; but it was eminently personal. He was imperfect, unfinished, inartistic; he was worse than provincial — he …

Its contempt of simple pleasures which everyone could enjoy but for its folly? Its eyeless vulgarity which has destroyed art, the one certain solace of labour?

Why art thou silent and invisible, Father of Jealousy?