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Art17 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 · 1973Filling a space in a beautiful way. That is what art means to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe · 1977All profoundly original art looks ugly at first. — Clement Greenberg · 1945All art is biographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. — Federico Fellini · 1965Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere. — G.K. Chesterton · 1928We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. — Henry James · 1893All 17 quotes →Nature of art6 quotes
Filling a space in a beautiful way. That is what art means to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe · 1977All profoundly original art looks ugly at first. — Clement Greenberg · 1945All art is biographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. — Federico Fellini · 1965Art is a completed pass. You don't just throw it out into the world-someone has to catch it. — James Turrell · 2013Even the act of peeling a potato can be a work of art if it is a conscious act. — Joseph Beuys · 1969Fine art can only be defined as exclusive, negative, absolute and timeless. It is not practical, useful, related, applicable, or subservient to anything else. — Ad Reinhardt · 1957Life5 quotes
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow · 1838He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars. — Jack London · 1903Life is a game... And you keep score with dollars. — Ted Turner · 1978Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? — Henry James · 1903Men and women5 quotes
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry. — Gloria Steinem · 1982Man has his will,—but woman has her way! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1857If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament. — Florynce Kennedy · 1973The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his—attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. — Henry James · 1881Power of literature5 quotes
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. — Italo Calvino · 1981All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. — Ernest Hemingway · 1934You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive. — James Baldwin · 1963You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that. — Gerald Brenan · 1986I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, "You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth." — Maya Angelou · 2013Truth5 quotes
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers. — John Churton Collins · 1900Facts are slippery. The truth is imperfect. Fiction recognizes that. — Salman Rushdie · 2015You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that. — Gerald Brenan · 1986Things get passed around so easily on the internet. And fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact, without anyone stepping in to arbitrate and say, what are your sources? — Hilary Mantel · 2015America4 quotes
This country was a lot better off when the Indians were running it. — Vine Deloria, Jr. · 1970The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. — Edward VIII · 1957The weakness of American civilization, and perhaps the chief reason why it creates so much discontent, is that it is so curiously abstract. It is a bloodless extrapolation of a satisfying life... You dine off the advertiser's "sizzling" and not the meat of the steak. — J.B. Priestley · 1971Some sense of religious mission is part of being American. — John Updike · 1996Authenticity4 quotes
To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home. — Joan Didion · 1961The true artist is a man who believes absolutely in himself, because he is absolutely himself. — Oscar Wilde · 1891I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning. — James Joyce · 1915When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. — James Joyce · 1915Beauty4 quotes
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. — Oscar Wilde · 1890For the sublime and the beautiful and interesting, you don't have to look far away. — Hedda Sterne · 2007Beauty is a form of genius,—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell, we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. — Oscar Wilde · 1890I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the aesthetically rejected subject. — Walker Evans · 1974Books4 quotes
I discovered me in the library. — Ray Bradbury · 2010A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. — Italo Calvino · 1981There are two perfumes to a book. If a book is new it smells great. If a book is old, it smells even better. It smells like ancient Egypt. — Ray Bradbury · 2010Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. — Stephen King · 2007Creativity4 quotes
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. — Albert Einstein · 1930We work in the dark—we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. — Henry James · 1893Imagination is more important than knowledge. — Albert Einstein · 1929Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck · 1947Democracy4 quotes
I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty. — William F. Buckley · 1961Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three. — E.M. Forster · 1938Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. — E.B. White · 1944History4 quotes
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956History, we know, is apt to repeat itself. — George Eliot · 1857You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that. — Gerald Brenan · 1986It would be nice to forget history, but we do it at our peril. — Lucille Clifton · 2007Human nature4 quotes
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. — Aldous Huxley · 1956Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. — Oscar Wilde · 1891That Calvinistic sense of Innate Depravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or other, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. — Herman Melville · 1850It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. — John Lennon · 1980Political theory4 quotes
The best government is that which governs least. — John L. O'Sullivan · 1837My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub. — Grover Norquist · 2001The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue. — James Q. Wilson · 1985Politics4 quotes
The best government is that which governs least. — John L. O'Sullivan · 1837The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970The best way to get inside city hall is to make noise on the street. — Bhairavi Desai · 2011Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? — Susan Sontag · 2001Rebellion4 quotes
Civil disobedience... Becomes a sacred duty when the State has become lawless, or... Corrupt. — Mahatma Gandhi · 1922Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. — Oscar Wilde · 1891The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade. — Hannah Arendt · 1970I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom. — Jim Morrison · 1968Women4 quotes
Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry. — Gloria Steinem · 1982The especial genius of women I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency. — Margaret Fuller · 1843Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. — Charlotte Whitton · 1963I met a Lady in the Meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child
Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild— — John Keats · 1820Writing4 quotes
I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it. — William Faulkner · 1956I don't wait to be struck by lightning and don't need certain slants of light in order to write. — Toni Morrison · 1981I want to write so that the reader in Des Moines, Iowa, in Kowloon, China, in Cape Town, South Africa, can say, "You know, that's the truth. I wasn't there, and I wasn't a six-foot black girl, but that's the truth." — Maya Angelou · 2013Your language becomes clear and strong, not when you can no longer add a sentence, but when you can no longer take away from it. — Isaac Babel · 1940Youth4 quotes
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. — Oscar Wilde · 1890I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself. — Joseph Conrad · 1898To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Realize your youth while you have it... Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Carpe diem3 quotes
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Realize your youth while you have it... Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? — Henry James · 1903Conservatism3 quotes
The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution. — Hannah Arendt · 1970National Review... Stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. — William F. Buckley · 1955Progress may have been all right once, but it went on too long. — Ogden Nash · 1959Education3 quotes
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner · 1964You don't need a certificate. Just do it or not do it. — Lawrence Weiner · 2015The mind of the thoroughly well informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-à-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Friendship3 quotes
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies. — Gore Vidal · 1973If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. — E.M. Forster · 1938Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature...to sympathise with a friend's success. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Gender relations3 quotes
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious: both are disappointed. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Now, we are becoming the men we wanted to marry. — Gloria Steinem · 1982Man has his will,—but woman has her way! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1857Genius3 quotes
Genius lasts longer than Beauty. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Beauty is a form of genius,—is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation. It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell, we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. — Thomas Edison · 1932Living life to the fullest3 quotes
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Realize your youth while you have it... Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? — Henry James · 1903Love3 quotes
There is always something ridiculous about the passions of people whom one has ceased to love. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Those who are faithful know only the pleasures of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies. — Oscar Wilde · 1890Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality. — Iris Murdoch · 1959Money3 quotes
Life is a game... And you keep score with dollars. — Ted Turner · 1978There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. — Oscar Wilde · 1891We have heard it said that five per cent is the natural interest of money. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1830Music3 quotes
I think the main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe. That's what music is to me-it's just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that's been given to us, and here's an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician’s is through his music. — John Coltrane · 1962It is only that which cannot be expressed otherwise that is worth expressing in music. — Frederick Delius · 1920They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art. — Charlie Parker · 1949