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Quotes about art

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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963Le Mystère Laïc (1928)
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.
MOMary Oliver1935–2019Evidence (2009), “Evidence”
- Music
- Virtue
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), “Shakespeare”, l. 1
- Genius
- Poetry
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches⁠—he has made music sick.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Der Fall Wagner (1888)
- Clever Jabs
- Music
Every great architect is — necessarily — a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
Frank Lloyd Wright1867–1959The Future of Architecture (1953)
- Poetry
Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.
IMIris Murdoch1919–1999“The Sublime and the Good”, in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
- Love
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature’s means.
Paul Gauguin1848–1903The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 39: ‘Huysmans and Redon’, (written in 1889, published 1953)
- Nature
The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
William Faulkner1897–1962Paris Review interview (1958)
- Writing
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils’ party without knowing it.
William Blake1757–1827The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)
- Poetry
I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
Tom Stoppard1937–2025The Real Thing (1982), Act II, scene V
- Poetry
- Writing
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Introduction to Ward’s English Poets (1880)
- Poetry
- Religion
Art is all about craftsmanship.
Federico Fellini1920–1993I’m a Born Liar (2003), “Craftsmanship”
A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
John Constable1776–1837Remark to a lady, as quoted in C. R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable (1843)
- Beauty
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Contact (1985), Chapter 24 (p. 431)
- Science