Quotes
Quotes about Wit
There will never be great architects or great architecture without great patrons.
Nor did there want Cornice or frieze with bossy sculpture graven.
Where we desire to be informed 'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own.
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.
His conduct still right with his argument wrong.
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir, these, I protest you, are too hard for me.
In arguing one should meet serious pleading with humor, and humor with serious pleading.
Nay, if he take you in hand, sir, with an argument, He'll bray you in a mortar.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
To strive with an equal is dangerous; with a superior, mad; with an inferior, degrading.
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
The canvas glow'd beyond ev'n nature warm; The pregnant quarry teem'd with human form.
The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result.
Art my slats! I can paint with a shoestring dipped in lard!
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
Art is running away without ever leaving home.
You know... that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at. The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film - or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.
Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Portraits are supposed to "look within," but in my opinion very few people have an interior significantly different from the outside portrait.
Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.
In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.
I always try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit in with the sequins and the fringes.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.
