Quotes
Quotes about Art
I have never known the impossible to be much trouble. You start off with the impossible, and that is a blank sheet on which the possible may be written
Heaven is limitless. It is not confined as our earth is confined. And yet, says the Lord, this house must be filled. Filled with countless human souls, and each one revelling in its divine uniqueness
I did not object to the opening up of the junk shop of my brain when that brain had ceased to be mine and had become merely part of the economy of the soil
What ... I was trying to prove was the limitlessness of the creative artist's province, his capacity for imagining feelings and situations totally beyond his personal encompassment
Art and morality have little to say to each other
I can't afford affairs. I mean, affairs begin with dinner and wine and candlelight to continue in commodious apartments. I live in one room and sleep in the smell of the gasring cooker
I can't afford affairs. I mean, affairs begin with dinner and wine and candlelight to continue in commodious apartments. I live in one room and sleep in the smell of gasring cookery
A man filled with meat turns his back on the dry bones of political doctrine. Fanatical devotion to the ruling party comes more readily from the materially deprived
I went back to my novel, crumpled the sheet I had started, and forced the characters back into total servitude to my will. Slaves, sort of, with only the illusion of freedom. Like all of us.
The tropical day as an allegory of life, starting in coolness and cleanliness and Edenic beauty and too soon continuing with sweat and the feel of grubbiness and the shirt and shoes already defiled
The linguistic specialist ... is scared of the semantic element in his subject. Phonemes and morphemes cause him no difficulty, but once you start studying meaning you're into culture
There have to be martyrs and witnesses
Art does not elevate us into beneficience. It is morally neutral, like the taste of an apple
Art is a division of heaven gratuitously given. Being quasi-divine, it is beyond human concerns... it is freely available to the morally evil as to the morally good
Art is a vision of heaven gratuitously given. Being quasi-divine, it is beyond human concerns... it is freely available to the morally evil as to the morally good
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who didn't know what fear was, we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
At fifteen my mind was set on learning. At thirty my character had been formed. At forty I had no more perplexities. At fifty I knew the Mandate of Heaven. At sixty I was at ease with whatever I heard. At seventy I could follow my heart's desire without transgressing moral principles.
The superior man is broadminded but not partisan; the inferior man is partisan but not broadminded.
Was never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain. No art can make it: it must spring Where elements are fostering. So in heaven's spot and hour Springs the little native flower, Downward root and upward eye, Shapen by the earth and sky.
"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source."
What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.
[Y]our destiny is a secret between yourself and God, just as love is a secret between two hearts.
The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion, but rather to know it.
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
I'll race you to China. You can have a head start. Ready, set, GO!
