Quotes About Art

I see humanity as merely one of Nature's latest schools of decorative painting. I don't distinguish in any fundamental way between a man and a tree, and I naturally prefer whichever is more decorative, whichever interests my thinking eyes.

Literature, which is art married to thought and the immaculate realization of reality, seems to me the goal towards which all human effort should be directed, as long as that effort is truly human and not just a vestige of the animal in us.

Note that the art of dreaming is not the art of directing our dreams. To direct is to act. The true dreamer surrenders to himself, is possessed by himself.

Only Tedium, which is a form of aloofness, and Art, which is a form of scorn, gild our [life] with a semblance of contentment.

A dandy in spirit, he paraded the art of dreaming through the pure happenstance of existence.

GörünüÅŸe bak?l?rsa uygarl?klar s?rf sanat ve edebiyat üretmek için var, kelimelerse onlardan bize kalan, bizimle konuÅŸan ÅŸeyler.

Everything in our activities that we hold to be superior participates in death and is death. What are ideals but an admission that life is worthless? What is art but the negation of life? A statue is a dead body, chiselled to capture death in incorruptible matter. Pleasure itself, which seems to be an immersion in life, is in fact an immersion in ourselves, a destruction of the relations between us and life, an excited shadow of death.

Por qué es bello el arte? Porque es inútil ¿Por qué es tan fea la vida? Porque en ella todo son fines y propósitos.

Disasters in novels are always beautiful because no real blood is shed in them, nor do the dead rot; in novels, not even rottenness is rotten.

To be an illustration seems to me the only ideal worthy of a contemporary woman.

Sólo faltaba que pudiésemos llamar obra de arte al urinario de Duchamp y nos prohibieran en nombre del buen gusto dar el mismo calificativo encomiástico a una faena de Curro Romero!

Ars est celare artem.

The basis of art is truth, both in matter and in mode.

There is no excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.

Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

So many people can now write competent stories that the short story is in danger of dying of competence.

Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay.

No art is sunk in the self, but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.

The artist uses his reason to discover an answering reason in everything he sees.

Poorly written novels -- no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters -- are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.

Art requires a delicate adjustment of the outer and inner worlds in such a way that, without changing their nature, they can be seen through each other.

The straightforward manner is seldom equal to the complications of the good subject. There may never be anything new to say, but there is always a new way to say it, and since, in art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said, every work of art is unique and requires fresh attention.