Art Quotes

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows, We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Agnes de Mille

Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

When I was one - And - Twenty, I heard a wise man say, Give pounds and crowns and guineas, But not your heart away. Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free. But I was one - And - Twenty, No use to talk to me.

A. E. Houseman

Depend upon it, after all, Thomas, Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man. For my own part, there is no seducing me from the path.

Edgar Allan Poe, From a letter to Frederick W. Thomas (February 14, 1849).

A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart.

Pietro Aretino

Man... is a tame or civilized animal never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized but if he be insufficiently or ill - Educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.

Plato

My love for you, Lord, is not an uncertain feeling, but a matter of concious certainty. With your word you pierced my heart, and I loved you. But heaven and earth and everything in them on all sides tell me to love you.

Saint Augustine, Confessions

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will.

George Eliot, Romola

Tell me thy company, and I will tell thee what thou art.

Miguel de Cervantes

The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties.

Oscar Wilde

When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside us, the doors of our souls fly open and love steps forth to heal everything in sight.

Michael Bridge

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

John Foster Dulles

Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

John Burroughs

The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield

The weather - Cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm - wind if it... did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.

Heinrich Heine

Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Art is a deliberate recreation of a new and special reality that grows from your response to life. It cannot be copied; it must be created.

Anonymous

All paths lead nowhere, follow the path with heart.

Carlos Castaneda

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

Dorothy Nevill

Educate the heart - - Educate the heart. Let us have good men.

Hiram Powers

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.

Plato

The art of love... is largely the art of persistence.

Albert Ellis

Scorching my seared heart with a pain, not hell shall make me fear again.

Edgar Allan Poe, Tamerlane, Part II

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Dwight D Eisenhowe

It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up, another falls to pieces.

Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones Diary

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

Henry Fielding

I think there are innumerable gods. What we here on earth call God is a little tribal God who has made an awful mess. Certainly forces operating trough human conciousness control events.

William S. Buroughs, Paris Review, Fall 1965

The earth has grown old with its burden of care But at Christmas it always is young, The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair And its soul full of music breaks the air, When the song of angels is sung.

Phillips Brooks

People are far more sincere and good - Humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.

Anton Chekhov

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

Al Capp

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

James Baldwin

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle - Aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

I. F. Stone

Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

W. S. Gilbert

Give me somewhere to stand, and I will move the earth.

Archimedes

Under the influence of art the walls expand, the roof rises, and it becomes a temple.

Robert Ingersoll, On Isadora Duncan

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

H. L. Mencken