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Quotes about art

621 quotes from 285 people

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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Seymour: An Introduction (1959)
- Poetry
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)
Art is a demonstration of which nature is the proof.
George Sand1804–1876François le Champi, Introduction (1848); Jane Minot Sedgwick (trans.) François the Waif {New York: H. M. Caldwell, 1894) p. 17
- Nature
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
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
Carl Sandburg1878–1967“Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry”, in Complete Poems (1950)
- Poetry
Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.
Carl Sandburg1878–1967“Jazz Fantasia” (1920)
- Music
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul Sartre1905–1980“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”
- History
- Poetry
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
If I were a better artist, I’d be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I’d write books — but I’m not, so I draw cartoons!
Charles M. Schulz1922–20001992, as quoted by Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World (21 February 2000)
- Writing
A cartoonist is someone who has to draw the same thing day after day without repeating himself.
Charles M. Schulz1922–2000You Don’t Look 35, Charlie Brown! (1985)
- Work
I don’t think there is any difference between fantasy and reality in the way these should be approached in a film. Of course if you live that way you are clinically insane.
Martin Scorseseborn 1942Scorsese on Scorsese (1989), ed. David Thompson and Ian Christie
- Movies
The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.
Roger Scruton1944–2020Modern Culture (2000), “Avant-garde and Kitsch” (p. 85)
- Beauty
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
The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.
Pete Seeger1919–2014How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (1981), p. 95
- Music
All art is but imitation of nature.
Seneca the Younger5 BC–AD 65Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXV: On the first cause, Line 3.