Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.
—Tacitus (56–117) Roman Orator, Historian
If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Russian Marxist Revolutionary
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
—Truman Capote (1924–84) American Novelist
To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
I don’t want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
—Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American Actress, Author
Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing—to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination—any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, till the Devil whispered behind the leaves “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
—John Ciardi (1916–86) American Poet, Teacher, Etymologist, Translator
The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—Andre Breton (1896–1966) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
Art is the highest task and proper metaphysical activity of this life.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Great people talk about great ideas; average people talk about average ideas; small people talk about other poeple.
—Anonymous
Would that we could at once paint with the eyes!—In the long way from the eye, through the arm, to the pencil, how much is lost!
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81) German Writer, Philosopher
In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
Art never improves, but the material of art is never quite the same.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Respect the masterpiece. It is true reverence to man. There is no quality so great, none so much needed now.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Any healthy man can go without food for two days—but not without poetry.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is a gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.
—Martin Luther (1483–1546) German Protestant Theologian
The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception and spirit and design he is hardly below even the poet.
—Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German Poet, Dramatist
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.
—Samuel Butler
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist