Art Quotes — page 5

Why is art beautiful? Because it's useless. Why is life ugly? Because it's all ends and purposes and intentions.

All the marvels of science and the gains of culture belong to the nation as a whole, and never again will man’s brain and human genius be used for oppression and exploitation.

Is there not An art, a music, and a stream of words That shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life?

People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to …

The general conception here maintained is not new; it is one already familiar from the works of Coleridge, Croce and many others; it is the view that art is at bottom neither more nor less than imagination.

The pleasure that painting as a dumb art give us, is like what we have from music; its beautiful forms, colours and harmony are to the eye what sounds and the harmony...are to the ear.

Science, like art, should not be something extraneous, added as a decoration to other activities of existence; it should be part of them, inspiring our most trivial actions as well as our noblest thoughts.

the custom will grow up of estimating the marginal significance of things in terms of the generally accepted article even when the article does not pass from hand to hand in exchanges

I was positively stunned and have straightaway become a votary of Mathura art to the exclusion of all the other and later schools. I had some of the things in reproductions but never dreamt they were so magnificent. With the possible …

Love, thou art best of Human Joys, Our chiefest Happiness below; All other Pleasures are but Toys, Musick without Thee is but Noise, And Beauty but an empty show.Heav’n, who knew best what Man wou’d move, And raise his Thoughts above the …

On the lines of the mighty and simple strains dominating the movement, and felt intuitively and studied out by him, the master artist groups with full intention, his muscular forms. No detail contradicts. His men and animals live. Such is …

One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of …

If one would understand the Greek genius fully, it would be a good plan to begin with their geometry.

O Music! sphere-descended maid, Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom's aid!

In Europe itself it is not probable that war will ever absolutely cease until science discovers some destroying force so simple in its administration, so horrible in its effects, that all art, all gallantry, will be at an end, and battles …

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

Where art thou, beam of light? Hunters, from the mossy rock, saw ye the blue-eyed fair?

In general, in-door prospects are the best. What purling brook matches the music of my gurgling bottle? What is an old roofless cathedral compared to a well-built pie?

With curious art the brain, too finely wrought, Preys on herself, and is destroy'd by thought: Constant attention wears the active mind, Blots out our powers, and leaves a blank behind.

The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.

That's just why, because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.

I know you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great.

With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.

(Of Shakespeare) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery (243)