Quotes About Art

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better.

I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.

Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.

Music is the art of thinking with sounds.

The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always graver than its performance - whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played.

The Sonata is an essentially dramatic art form, combining the emotional range in vivid presentation of a full-size stage drama with the terseness of a short story.

Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite and lets us for moments gaze into that!

One cannot judge 'Lohengrin' from a first hearing, and I certainly do not intend to hear it a second time.

Opera purges men of those hesitations and worries which make it difficult for them to acknowledge their importance to themselves. A good performance of an opera, that is, provides a language for us to speak of ourselves as we have always known we should speak.

A nation creates music - the composer only arranges it.

Music is only sound expressing certain patterns, so to what extent is that sound architecture and to what extent theatre?

Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.

The good composer is slowly discovered, the bad composer is slowly found out.

Mozart is the human incarnation of the divine force of creation.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

There are two parts to the creative endeavor: making something, then disseminating it.

A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.

Originality is the art of concealing your sources.

All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.

Buy old masters. They fetch a better price than old mistresses.

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don't they try to understand the singing of birds? People love the night, a flower, everything that surrounds them without trying to understand them. But painting - that they must understand.

I hope with all my heart there will be painting in heaven.

Painting, n: the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.