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Quotes about art

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I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
Michael Faraday1791–1867Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403
- Facts
- Poetry
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
William S. Burroughs1914–1997The Western Lands (1987), ch. 2
- Writing
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden1907–1973A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970), “Friday, Good”
- Christianity
- Poetry
In the largest sense, every work of art is protest. … A lullaby is a propaganda song and any three-year-old knows it. … A hymn is a controversial song — sing one in the wrong church: you’ll find out. …
Pete Seeger1919–2014Pop Chronicles, Show 33—Revolt of the Fat Angel: American musicians respond to the British invaders. Part 1, interview recorded 2.14.1968.
- Music
All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.
Federico Fellini1920–1993On the autobiographical nature of his films, in The Atlantic (December 1965)
Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Table-Talk (1857)
- Poetry
The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.
Dylan Thomas1914–1953Poetic Manifesto (1951)
- God
- Poetry
Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.
Leo Tolstoy1828–1910What is Art? (1897), Ch. 8
I don’t know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Teddy (1953)
- Poetry
‘Paradise Lost’ is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
- Poetry
- Reading
Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
George Sand1804–1876Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876)
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.
Edgar Degas1834–1917‘The Shop-Talk of Edgar Degas’, (1961)
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden1907–1973Another Time (1940)
- Life & Death
- Poetry
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck1902–1968“…like captured fireflies” (1955)
- Education
A poem should not mean
But be.
Archibald MacLeish1892–1982“Ars Poetica”, Collected Poems, 1917-1982 (1985)
- Poetry