Quotes About Art

The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it… but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

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.

Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.

God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

Dear me! how long is art! And short is our life! I often know amid the scholar's strife A sinking feeling in my mind and heart. How difficult the means are to be found By which the primal sources may be breached; And long before the halfway point is reached, They bury a poor devil in the ground.

We amuse ourselves painting our prison-walls with bright figures and brilliant landscapes.

The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation.

Colors are light's suffering and joy

I call architecture frozen music.

Art is long, life short, judgment difficult, opportunity transient. To act is easy, to think is hard; to act according to our thought is troublesome.

Man sollte alle Tage wenigstens ein kleines Lied hören, ein gutes Gedicht lesen, ein treffliches Gemälde sehen und, wenn es möglich zu machen wäre, einige vernünftige Worte sprechen.

What I have lately said of painting is equally true with respect to poetry. It is only necessary for us to know what is really excellent, and venture to give it expression; and that is saying much in few words. To-day I have had a scene, which, if literally related, would, make the most beautiful idyl in the world. But why should I talk of poetry and scenes and idyls? Can we never take pleasure in nature without having recourse to art?

It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.

This is another one of those creatures whom, like the pelican, I have fed with the blood of my own heart... There were special circumstances close at hand, urgent, troubling me, and they resulted in the state of mind that produced Werther. I had lived, loved, and suffered much... That's what it was.

For in music there is no material to be deducted.

Not Art and Science serve, alone; Patience must in the work be shown. Long is the calm brain active in creation; Time, only, strengthens the fine fermentation.

It is such an agreeable feeling to be busy with something one is only half-competent to do that nobody should criticize the dilettante for taking up an art he will never learn, or blame the artist who leaves the territory of his own art for the pleasure of trying himself in a neighbouring one.

He who possesses science and art also has religion; but he who possesses neither of those two, let him have religion!

Art—the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.