Quotes About Art

Ashley gave me a tiny smile. I began to feel bad. Maybe I was really important to her. I wasn't sure. I was pretty sure I was her only friend, though. I had four good friends, but so far, Ashley only had me. Besides, this was art. What Ashley and I were doing was important and it was something I do only with Ashley, not with any of my other friends.

crayons and things. The kids we sit for go wild when we bring them on

The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained—as the beliefs, rituals, and iconography of each of our religions attest to centuries of cross-pollination among them.

was only God's rough draft, but Eve was his masterpiece.

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.

Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing.

The true art of memory, is the art of attention

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.

which has the power or quality of adding. The additory fiction gives to a great man a larger share of reputation than belongs to him, to enable him to serve some good end or purpose.Arbuthnot'sArt of political Lying.

The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employed; as a diamond, though it cannot be made, may be polished by art, and placed in such a situation, as to display that luster which before was buried among common stones.

Let Art and Genius weep.

in lexicography, as in other arts, naked science is too delicate for the purposes of life. The value of a work must be estimated by its use; it is not enough that a dictionary delights the critick, unless, at the same time, it instructs the learner; as it is to little purpose that an engine amuses the philosopher by the subtilty of its mechanism, if it requires so much knowledge in its application as to be of no advantage to the common workman.

It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art, to imitate nature; but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature, which are most proper for imitation: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discoloured by passion, or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind as upon a mirrour which shews all

Affection is the lively representment of any passion whatsoever, as if the figures stood not upon a cloth or board, but as if they were acting upon a stage.Wotton'sArchitecture.

A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank after many a poor and illiterate peasant.

Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith

When a man is unhappy he writes damned bad poetry, I find.