Edgar Degas on dancing

The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.

I assure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament — temperament is the word — I know nothing.

If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don’t mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

George Bernard Shaw1856–1950

No sane man will dance.

Cicero107–43 BC