Quotes
Quotes about Art
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
The artist must raise the cup of his vision aloft to the gods in the high hope that they will pour into it the sweet mellow wine of inspiration.
A man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of life getting his living.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.
This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere: the dew is never all dried at once: a shower is forever falling, vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else.
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer is as inexorable as one's self!
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.
I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
