Art Quotes

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.

Franz Kafka

Doing abominations is against the law, particularly if the abominations are done while wearing a lobster bib.

Woody Allen, Without Feathers

Jean Paul Sartre says in No Exit that hell is other people. Well, our task in life is to make it heaven. Or at least earth.

Alan Alda, GQ, Summer, 1980

No form of Nature is inferior to Art for the arts merely imitate natural forms.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Let each man exercise the art he knows.

Aristophanes, Wasps, 422 B. C.

Teachers believe they have a gift for giving it drives them with the same irrepressible drive that drives others to create a work of art or a market or a building.

A Bartlett Giamatti

A dream can be nurtured over years and years and then flourish rapidly.... Be patient. It will happen for you. Sooner or later, life will get weary of beating on you and holding the door shut on you, and then it will let you in and throw you a real party.

Les Brown

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. That is part of the penalty for greatness, and every great man understands it; and understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness. The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure continously without resentment.

Elbert Hubbard

You are not an artist, an artist creates. You do not write your own songs. End of debate.

Eric Pio

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

In reply to the question, What was it the last man on earth said Where is everybody.

Carl Sandburg

A man should not leave this earth with unfinished business. He should live each day as if it was a pre - Flight check. He should ask each morning, am I prepared to lift - Off?

Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, All is Vanity, 1991

Mighty are the winds of time, which sweep away the despair of a broken heart, which blow back the essence of life, which refresh the soul with yet another sweet countenance.

Dax Ward

Those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.

Izaak Walton

The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief, which is at the heart of all popular religion, that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart.

Richard Adams

When the highest type of men hear Tao, They diligently practice it. When the average type of men hear Tao, They half believe in it. When the lowest type of men hear Tao, They laugh heartily at it.

Lao Tzu

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

Cyril Connolly

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

W. Somerset Maugham

There is a wisdom of the head, and... a wisdom of the heart.

Charles Dickens

Do no dishonour to the earth least you dishonour the spirit of man.

Henry Beston

In your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go and sheltered so may thrive and grow.

Louise Driscoll

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish to bewail it senseless.

W. Somerset Maugham

The most important principle of divine philosophy is the oneness of the world of humanity, the unity of mankind, the bond conjoining East and West, the tie of love which blends human hearts.

Abdul Baha, April 19, 1912, Earl Hall

We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda it is a form of truth.

John F. Kennedy

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.

Nikola Tesla

Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done.

A. E. Hotchne

Above all, we are coming to understand that the arts incarnate the creativity of a free people. When the creative impulse cannot flourish, when it cannot freely select its methods and objects, when it is deprived of spontaneity, then society severs the root of art.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground.

Unknown

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Lord Acton

No Voice; but oh! the silence sank like music on my heart.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is nothing hidden between Heaven and Earth.

Venezuelan Prove

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Sextus Propertius, Elegies

Brains, you know, are suspect in the Republican Party.

Irving Layton

Enough shovels of earth.......................... a mountain. Enough pails of water............................... a river.

Chinese Prove

An envious heart makes a treacherous ear.

Zora Neale Hurston, "Their Eyes Were Watching God".