All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
—Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American Abstract Painter
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
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
The perception of the comic is a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge of sanity, and a protection from those perverse tendencies and gloomy insanities in which fine intellects sometimes lose themselves. A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still convertible. If that sense is lost, his fellow-men can do little for him.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Art is man’s expression of his joy in labor.
—William Morris (1834–96) British Designer, Craftsman, Poet, Writer
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Every artist writes his own autobiography.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Essayist, Physician
Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) Italian-born French Poet, Playwright
A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the school-masters of ever afterward.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
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
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
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
—Georges Braque (1882–1963) French Painter, Collagist, Co-founder of Cubism
There is one way to handle the ignorant and malicious critic. Ignore him.
—Unknown
I don’t want people who want to dance; I want people who have to dance.
—George Balanchine (1904–83) Russian-Born American Choreographer, Actor
Caricature is rough truth.
—George Meredith (1828–1909) British Novelist, Poet, Critic
We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. Well, art is art, isnt it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… Now you tell me what you know.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–38) American Novelist
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who artists. But couldn’t everyone’s life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not your life?
—Michel Foucault (1926–84) French Philosopher, Critic, Historian
I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value. So, as I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge or a vigor of spring as well as an infinite variety of color that no artifact I have seen in the last 60 years can rival.
—Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) American Art Critic, Historian
A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith, in later times they use the objects of faith to show their powers of painting.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
—Kenneth Tynan (1927–80) English Theatre Critic, Writer
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
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