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Quotes about art

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What’s come to perfection perishes.
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes.
Robert Browning1812–1889Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Old Pictures in Florence, xvii.
All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn’t your pet — it’s your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.
Joss Whedonborn 1964Reddit IAmA (c. April 2012)
A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity — he is continually informing — and filling some other body.
John Keats1795–1821To Richard Woodhouse (27 October 1818)
- Poetry
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It’s clever, but is it Art?”
Rudyard Kipling1865–1936Other works
We want our sound to go into the soul of the audience, and see if it can awaken some little thing in their minds… ‘Cause there are so many sleeping people.
Jimi Hendrix1942–1970Dick Cavett interview (1969)
- Music
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 9
- Honor
Clarionet, n. An instrument of torture operated by a person with cotton in his ears. There are two instruments that are worse than a clarionet⁠—two clarionets.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
- Comedy
- Music
The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859), Vol. I, Ch. II
- Music
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Personal Recollections (1981), p. 96
- Music
- Technology
The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.
Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them — that does not occur to them.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 36e
- Music
- Poetry
A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.
Ansel Adams1902–1984“A Personal Credo” (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944)
- Photography
In that film Love Story, there’s a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Love means saying you’re sorry every day for some little thing or other.
Ray Bradbury1920–2012The Paris Review interview (2010)
- Love
- Movies
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
- Writing
Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
Alan Watts1915–1973Inside Information p. 7
- Poetry