Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The art is long, life is short.

There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.

Genres aren’t closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

I just make the pictures and where they fall is where they fall. If somebody likes them, that’s always nice. And if they don’t like them, then too bad.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

It seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

I don’t think I’d ever apologise for music I make, no.

I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it’s no longer his… I just see what people make of it.

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Sometimes I think that there’s a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

No person who is not a great sculptor or painter can be an architect. If he is not a sculptor or painter, he can only be a builder.

The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman’s heart.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

To do a dull thing with style-now that’s what I call art.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

All art is quite useless.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

My focus is my art, and that’s what I love to do. I have to be really passionate in order to do something. I’ve turned down many things that I just didn’t believe in.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

All good art is an indiscretion.

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always a devout person.

I suppose for me as an artist it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture that I was living in. It just seemed like a challenge to move it a little bit towards the way I thought it might be interesting to go.

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.

I draw from the crowd a lot.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

All great art is the work of the whole living creature, body and soul, and chiefly of the soul.