Quotes About Art

The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence.

In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, education and culture must be essentially the art of deceiving - deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul.

What is the sign of every literary decadence ? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and leaps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the meaning of the page, the page gains life at the expense of the whole—the whole is no longer a whole.

Certainly one quality which nowadays has been best forgotten—and that is why it will take some time yet for my writings to become readable—is essential in order to practise reading as an art—a quality for the exercise of which it is necessary to be a cow, and under no circumstances a modern man!—rumination.   SILS-MARIA, UPPER ENGADINE, July, 1887.

melalui musik, bahkan hasrat kita dapat meikmati dirinya sendiri

Plato's objection to the older art--that it is the imitation of a phantom and hence belongs to a sphere even lower than the empirical world--could certainly not be directed against the new art; and so we find Plato endeavoring to transcend reality and to represent the idea which underlies this pseudo-reality.

An einem Philosophen ist es eine Nichtswürdigkeit zu sagen »das Gute und das Schöne sind eins«; fügt er gar noch hinzu »auch das Wahre«, so soll man ihn prügeln. Die Wahrheit ist häßlich. Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehn.

Plato has given to all posterity the model of a new art form, the model of the novel --which may be described as an infinitely enhanced Aesopian fable, in which poetry holds the same rank in relation to dialectical philosophy as this same philosophy held for many centuries in relation to theology: namely the rank of ancilla .

Nu cunosc un alt fel de a duce la îndeplinire Å£eluri mari decât jocul; aceasta este, ca indiciu al m?reÅ£iei, o premis? esenÅ£ial?. Cea mai mic? constrângere, un chip întunecat, o nota dur? în voce sunt toate obiecÅ£ii ce se îndreapt? împotriva unui om, ÅŸi cu mult mai mult împotriva operei sale!

the illusion of the artistic rendering of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then at least the grandmother of every concept. In

Great poets create only from their own reality?to the point where they cannot stand their work any more afterwards ... Whenever I glance through my Zarathustra, I walk around the room for half an hour, sobbing uncontrollably.

There is one thing one has to have: either a cheerful disposition by nature or a disposition made cheerful by art and knowledge

art it is easier to go over to a really emancipating philosophical science.

The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.

Postojanje i svet izgledaju opravdani jedino kao estetski fenomen: u kom smislu nas upravo tragi?ki mit treba da ubedi kako su ?ak i rugoba i nesklad umetni?ka igra koju volja, u ve?itom preobilju svoje naslade, igra sa samom sobom.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

and most modern and all surrealist art is nothing but attempted witchcraft, borrowing its forms from the primitive witchdoctor and its ideas from the modern theosophist." He

I make no distinction whatever between reality and fantasy, or the objective and the subjective. All life and all awareness are ultimately one, including intensest pain and death itself. Not all the play need please us, and ends are never comforting. Some things fit together harmoniously and beautifully and startlingly with thrilling discords—those are true—and some do not, and those are merely bad art. Don't you see?

Quien miente con arte se acerca a la verdad más de lo que imagina.

When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can.

When Whistler was complimented on the portrait of his mother, he said, "You know how it is; one tries to make one's Mummy just as nice as he can." When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother.

Finite intelligence needs many words in order to express ideas; but God speaks once and for all within Himself—one single Word which reaches the abyss of all things that are known and can be known. In that Word of God are hidden all the treasures of wisdom, all the secrets of sciences, all the designs of the arts, all the knowledge of mankind.

Finite intelligence needs many words in order to express ideas; but God speaks once and for all within Himself—one single Word which reaches the abyss of all things that are known and can be known. In that Word of God are hidden all the treasures of wisdom, all the secrets of sciences, all the designs of the arts, all the knowledge of mankind. But this knowledge, compared to the Word, is only the feeblest broken syllable.

I can't think of any film that improved on a good novel, but I can think of many good films that came from very bad novels.