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Quotes about art

621 quotes from 285 people

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The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value.
Simone Weil1909–1943On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968), “The responsibility of writers,” p. 167
If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
Rachel Carson1907–1964Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952)
- Poetry
- Writing
Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963On Invisibility
- Morality
- Poetry
In memory everything seems to happen to music.
Tennessee Williams1911–1983The Glass Menagerie (1944)
- Music
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet’s dream.
William Wordsworth1770–1850Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 4 (wr. 1805; pub. 1807)
- Poetry
For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.
J. R. R. Tolkien1892–1973“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” (1936), p. 14
Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
William Congreve1670–1729The Mourning Bride (1697)
- Music
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time,
Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?
William Morris1834–1896The Earthly Paradise (1868), “An Apology”, ll. 22–23
- Poetry
The world’s history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word.
James A. Garfield1831–1881The Province of History (c. 1856), Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 620
- History
- Poetry
I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all.
Federico Fellini1920–1993I’m a Born Liar (2003), “Artistic Freedom”
- Freedom
You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Journal (26 January 1840)
- Poetry
The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.
Paul Klee1879–1940Diary entry (1915), # 951 , in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Introduction
- Writing
He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.
George Sand1804–1876Histoire de ma vie (1854-55), on Chopin’s Preludes
- Music
A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
José Martí1853–1895Dedication of the Statue of Liberty (1887)
- Poetry