The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Marcel Proust2 quotes
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance. — Marcel Proust · 1922Only through art can we get outside of ourselves and know another's view of the universe which is not the same as ours and see landscapes which would otherwise have remained unknown to us like the landscapes of the moon. Thanks to art, instead of seeing a single world, our own, we see it multiply until we have before us as many worlds as there are original artists. — Marcel Proust · 1922Susan Sontag2 quotes
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 · 1973Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. — Susan Sontag · 1966Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn1 quote
The only substitute for an experience we ourselves have never lived through is art, literature. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1972Alexander Pope1 quote
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,
Live o'er each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage. — Alexander Pope · 1713John F. Kennedy1 quote
When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment. — John F. Kennedy · 1963Joseph Conrad1 quote
But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition—and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives: to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain. — Joseph Conrad · 1897Leon Battista Alberti1 quote
Painting contains a divine force which not only makes absent men present, as friendship is said to do, but moreover makes the dead seem almost alive. — Leon Battista Alberti · 1435Oscar Wilde1 quote
It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realize our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Salvador Dali1 quote
Take me, I am the drug. — Salvador Dali · 1970Saul Bellow1 quote
Art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm... An arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. — Saul Bellow · 1967