Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
—Scott Adams (b.1957) American Cartoonist
Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the consciousness of the brotherhood of man-we know that the well-being of man lies in the union with his fellow men. True science should indicate the various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should transform this perception into feeling. The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man is now obtained by external means-by law courts, police, charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.-should be obtained by man’s free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.
—David Hockney (b.1937) English Painter, Draughtsman
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
—Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.
—Andy Warhol (1928–87) American Painter, Printmaker, Film Personality
As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal.
—George Santayana (1863–1952) Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher
Music is the movement of sound to reach the soul for the education of its virtue.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
I think it is owing to the good sense of the English that they have not painted better.
—William Hogarth (1697–1764) English Painter, Engraver
Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
Art at its most significant is a distant early warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen.
—Marshall Mcluhan (1911–80) Canadian Writer, Thinker, Educator
Don’t mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it; if unfair, keep from irritation; if it is ignorant, smile; if it is justified it is not criticism, learn from it.
—Unknown
If I didn’t start painting, I would have raised chickens.
—Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American Painter, Artist
Art is simply a right method of doing things. The test of the artist does not lie in the will with which he goes to work, but in the excellence of the work he produces.
—Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) Italian Catholic Priest, Philosopher, Theologian
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. An artist recreates those aspects of reality which represent his fundamental view of man’s nature.
—Ayn Rand (1905–82) Russian-born American Novelist, Philosopher
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
—Honore de Balzac (1799–1850) French Novelist
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model.
—Northrop Frye
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
Fortunately art is a community effort—a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations, but Art is required to sort and understand them.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Composer, Musician
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you—like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist—or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.
—Edgard Varese (1883–1965) French-American Composer
Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes
The more the statue grows.
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
Art is not to be taught in Academies. It is what one looks at, not what one listens to, that makes the artist. The real schools should be the streets.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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
Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German Poet, Playwright, Theater Personality
Those who can—do. Those who can’t—criticize.
—Indian Proverb
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–80) English Theatre Critic, Writer
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author’s own life into them.
—Samuel Butler
Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
In a very ugly and sensible age, the arts borrow, not from life, but from each other.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.
—Edward Hopper (1882–1967) American Realist Painter
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
Art is science made clear.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator