Art Quotes

May the gods grant you all things which your heart desires, and may they give you a husband and a home and gracious concord, for there is nothing greater and better than this - when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and joy to their friends, and win high renown.

Homer, The Odyssey

An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.

Harold Loukes

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

Paul Valery, Tel Quel 2 (1943)

I remember a time when everybody I loved hated me because I hated them. - Letter to Stuart Sutcliffe circa 1960.

John Lennon

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

Isaac Asimov

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Plato

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.

Joe Paterno

Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated.

Auguste Rodin

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

George Washington

Live as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

Cicero

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

I am part of the sea and stars And the winds of the South and North Of mountains and Moon and Mars, And the ages sent me forth.

Edward H. S. Terry

When I consider the small span of my life absorbed in the eternity of all time, or the small part of space which I can touch or see engulfed by the infinite immensity of spaces that I know not and that know me not, I am frightened and astonished to see myself here instead of there... now instead of then.

Blaise Pascal

Blossoms are scattered by the wind and the wind cares nothing, but the blossoms of the heart no wind can touch.

Yoshida Kenko

Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward for there you have been, there you long to return.

Leonardo DaVinci

Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.

Albert Einstein

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because women live creatively, they rarely experience the need to depict or write about that which to them is a primary experience and which men know only at a second remove. Women create naturally, men create artificially.

Ashley Montagu

Live as brave men and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

Cicero

Start every day with a smile and get it over with.

William Claude Dunkenfield (W. C. Fields)

What we won when all of our people united... must not be lost in suspicion and distrust and selfishness and politics. ... Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as president.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Buddha

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

Washington Irving

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

Oswald Spengle

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding, from Four Quartets

Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field.

Jim Boulton

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken

Hear me, my chiefs I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

Chief Joseph

Fill your mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart.

Marianne Williamson

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.

Jonathan Swift

How many things which served us yesterday as articles of faith, are fables for us today.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

Plato, Dialogues, Phaedo

There is no greater excitement than to support an intellectual wife and have her support you. Marriage is a partnership in which each inspires the other, and brings fruition to both of you.

Millicent Carey McIntosh

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

Simonides, Epitaph for the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae

Diplomacy is the art of knowing what not to say.

Matthew Trump, in Mother Earth News

Trust no future, however pleasant Let the dead past bury its dead Act, - Act in the living Present Heart within and God overhead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.

Martha Washington