Art Quotes

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Paul Valery, Tel Quel 2 (1943)

The first sign of a nervous breakdown is when you start thinking your work is terribly important.

Milo Bloom

Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.

Henry David Thoreau

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

Anatole France

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

Ludwig von Beethoven

You know that children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.

John J. Plomp

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

Samuel Johnson, (attributed)

In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - - That is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

James Thurbe

I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

Ben Shahn

The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.

Bernard Avishai

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.

Cyril Connolly

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Samuel Butle

Love is something like the clouds that were in the sky, Before the sun came out. You cannot touch the clouds, you know but you feel the rain and know How glad the flowers and the thirsty earth are to have it after a hot day. You cannot touch love either, But you feel the sweetness that it pours into everything.

Annie Sullivan

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the preface

Go tell the Spartans, Passerby, That here, obedient to their laws, We lie.

Simonides, Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae

Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance.

Frank Moore Colby

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Ambrose Bierce

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.

Eric Hoffe

After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in esthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest sceintists are always artists as well.

Albert Einstein

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet lxxxvii

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eyes and the heart of the child.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature".

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 21, 1838

Listen to your heart, because in the end it is your heart that matters.

Jennifer Tyle

As an anti - American, I thank you for your rotten article devoted to my person.

Prince Sihanouk in a letter to Time magazine

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves.

E. M. Forste

Fix this sentence: He put the horse before the cart.

Stephen Price

The bird has an honor that man does not have. Man lives in the traps of his abdicated laws and traditions but the birds live according to the natural law of God who causes the earth to turn around the sun.

Kahlil Gibran

The best way to inspire people to superior performance is to convince them by everything you do and by your everyday attitude that you are wholeheartedly supporting them.

Harold S. Geneen

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being happy except that they are so.

William Inge

The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him.

Jim Samuels

A lie travels farther than the truth.

Irish Prove

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Dalai Llama

Art does not imitate life. Art is much more powerful than that. Art brings life back. And it does it by exposing the secrets we all carry inside.

Jose Raul Bernardo, The Secret of the Bulls (Simon & Schuster, 1996

Light be the earth upon you, lightly rest.

Euripides, Alcestis, 438 B. C.

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular.

George Santayana

The Soviet Union would remain a one - Party nation even if an opposition party were permitted - Because everyone would join that party.

Ronald Reagan