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Quotes about art

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Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
Albert Camus1913–1960The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
- Writing
We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
Niels Bohr1885–1962In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Language (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. …
- Poetry
- Science
If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry.
John Lennon1940–19801972 Mike Douglas Show, quoted in: Lawrence, Ken (2005) John Lennon: In His Own Words, p. 107.
- Music
You can calculate the worth of a man by the number of his enemies, and the importance of a work of art by the harm that is spoken of it.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet (14 June 1853)
- Enemies
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 14 August 1853
- Poetry
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Walt Whitman1819–1892Song of Myself (1855), Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Song of Myself, 52In context
- Poetry
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Line 1In context
- Poetry
If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Remarks at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (14 June 1956)
- Poetry
- Politics
When she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing of exquisite music.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847), Part I, section 1.
- Beauty
- Music
Music is well said to be the speech of angels.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881The Opera (1852).
- Music
There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sir Walter Scott (1838)
- Poetry
Degrade first the arts if you’d mankind degrade,
Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.
William Blake1757–1827Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses, title page (c. 1798–1809)
Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms.
Aldous Huxley1894–1963Point Counter Point (1928), Ch. 28
- Humor
The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they’re seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?
André Gide1869–1951The Immoralist (1902), p. 159
- Beauty
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James1842–1910Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), Ch. 11—Clifford’s Lectures and Essays (1879)
- Poetry
- Science