Quotes About Art

The study of history and philosophy, accompanied by some acquaintance with art and literature, should be for lawyers and engineers as well as for those who study in arts faculties.

Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair.

We suffered for our art. You have to suffer for our art as well!

Craft goes only so far in explaining how an artist uses his gift, and the gift itself is often inexplicable. Autobiography provides an alternate route—a seeming detour that may ultimately tell us something about an artist's sensibility and the experiences that shaped it.

Poetry was alive and dangerous.

The light of reason and civilization was virtually snuffed out by the Barbarian hordes who swarmed across Europe, annihilating everything the Romans had put in place, sacking Rome itself and consigning Europe to the Dark Ages. The Barbarians brought only chaos and ignorance, until the Renaissance rekindled the fires of Roman learning and art. It's a familiar story, but it's codswallop.

the Middle Ages was the period during which most of the art depicting angels--still used today as models--originated. The New Catholic Encyclopedia says that actually the figural type of the Christian angel was derived from the winged Greek goddess of victory, Nike.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character there was nothing particularly new about this - death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

That's what poems are for, unlivable love." epigraph to "In Lilac-Light

A beautiful bridge is a poem.

Everything passes—Robust artAlone is eternal.The bustSurvives the city.

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

J'aime la folle cruauté des chimères qu'on apprivoise.

Demander à la poésie du sentimentalisme ... ce n'est pas ça. Des mots rayonnants, des mots de lumière ... avec un rythme et une musique, voilà ce que c'est, la poésie.

The very essence of ballet is poetic, deriving from dreams rather than from reality. About the only reason for its existence is to enable us to remain in the world of fantasy and escape from the people we rub shoulders with in the street. Ballets are the dreams of poets taken seriously.

I belong to those for whom the superfluous is necessary.

For Art alone is great: The bust survives the state, The crown the potentate.

For Thérèse, poetry was not "art for amusement," because she did not write for her own satisfaction but out of duty, or at least with a concern to serve, to help, and to encourage.6

I wanted to love this piano. I wanted to invite music back into my life.

The effect is captivating as all of the tones mix, like a watercolor with hues swirled together, and lovely carrying notes long after the fingers are lifted from the keys.

It's a world with its own traditions and lore, some of which are hidden within pianos themselves.

Music isn't music unless we share it with others," she told me, but even then that sentiment seemed unsatisfactory to me.

Motionless, he held the final chord for a long moment and we felt—I could almost say watched—the harmony rise into the light-filled cold of the atelier.

Listen to the colour of your dreams.