Art is power. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Art not thou a man? [ Bible ]
The art of cookery.
Life is short, art long. [ Hippocrates ]
Remember thou art a man.
Nature is the art of God. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
Music is the soul of art. [ J. B. Brown ]
Thou, O Lord, art my glory. [ Motto ]
Resolve, and thou art free. [ Longfellow ]
Art is nature concentrated. [ Balzac ]
Art must be deluded by Art. [ Proverb ]
The inglorious arts of peace. [ Andrew Marvell ]
Patience is the art of hoping. [ Vauvenargues ]
For Art is Nature made by Man
To Man the interpreter of God. [ Owen Meredith ]
According to the rules of art.
The highest art is artlessness. [ F. A. Durivage ]
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in art. [ Longfellow ]
Rhetoric is the creature of art. [ H. Holley ]
Let echo, too, perform her part,
Prolonging every note with art;
And in a low expiring strain,
Play all the comfort over again. [ Addison ]
Man's true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not - Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow? [ Burns ]
Philosophy is the art of living. [ Plutarch ]
Art needs no spur beyond itself. [ Victor Hugo ]
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,A Psalm Of Life ]
Affection lights a brighter flame
Than ever blazed by art. [ William Cowper ]
O thou sculptor, painter, poet,
Take this lesson to thy heart;
That is best which lieth nearest;
Shape from that thy work of art. [ Longfellow ]
Art is pleasure, even in old age. [ E. Quellin ]
A picture is a poem without words. [ Horace ]
Every artist was first an amateur. [ Emerson ]
Art is long, and Time is fleeting. [ Longfellow ]
A blessing on the printer's art! -
Books are the mentors of the heart. [ Mrs. Hale ]
As the husband is, the wife is:
Thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature
Will have weight to drag thee down. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
Art is not imitation, but Illusion. [ Charles Reade ]
Unless art deceives, it is not art. [ Reiner ]
Necessity is stronger far than art. [ Aeschylus ]
Echo waits with art and care
And will the faults of song repair. [ Emerson ]
Every art cherishes its sister arts. [ Horace ]
Affliction is enamored of thy parts,
And thou art wedded to calamity. [ William Shakespeare ]
So vast is art; so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought. [ Whittier ]
Natural graces, that extinguish art. [ William Shakespeare ]
Art may err, but nature cannot miss. [ Dryden ]
Art does not imitate, but interpret. [ Mazzini ]
Art is art, even though unsuccessful. [ J. Harris ]
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. [ Pope ]
Art helps Nature, and Experience Art. [ Proverb ]
We by art unteach what Nature taught. [ Dryden ]
'Tis said that absence conquers love;
But oh! believe it not.
I've tried, alas! its power to prove,
But thou art not forgot. [ Frederick W. Thomas ]
Fortune, my friend, I've often thought
Is weak, if Art assist her not:
So equally all Arts are vain,
If Fortune help them not again. [ Sheridan ]
Art is a sweet consoler in misfortune. [ Amphis ]
Music can noble hints impart.
Engender fury, kindle love;
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art. [ Addison ]
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave.
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave. [ Longfellow ]
I will fasten on this sleeve of thine;
Thou art an elm, my husband, I, a vine. [ William Shakespeare ]
Life is the art of being well-deceived. [ Hazlitt ]
Let it content thee that thou art a man. [ Lessing ]
The perfection of art is to conceal art. [ Quintilian ]
Give me a look, give me a face.
That makes simplicity a grace:
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries of art;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. [ Ben Jonson ]
He that sips of many arts drinks of none. [ Fuller ]
The true artist can only labor con amore. [ Victor Hugo ]
Oh, Love! no habitant of earth thou art -
An unseen seraph, we believe in thee. [ Byron ]
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist. [ Francis Wayland ]
In every art it is good to have a master. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
An artist should have more than two eyes. [ Lamartine ]
Silence is one great art of conversation. [ Hazlitt ]
And thou art terrible - the tear,
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier;
And ail we know, or dream, or fear
Of agony, are thine. [ Halleck ]
Toil of science swells the wealth of art. [ Schiller ]
Art is a ready means of access to royalty. [ Tiberius Maximus ]
There is no art that can make a fool wise. [ Proverb ]
Thou art a plant sprung up to wither never
But like a laurel, to grow green forever. [ Herrick ]
Every man is to be trusted in his own art. [ Proverb ]
The great artist is the slave of his ideal. [ Bovee ]
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art. [ Pope ]
The laws of morality are also those of art. [ Schumann ]
Nature in women is so nearly allied to art. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Riches and favour go before wisdom and art. [ Danish Proverb ]
High minds, of native pride and force.
Most deeply feel thy pangs. Remorse!
Fear, for their scourge, mean villains have,
Thou art the torturer of the brave! [ Scott ]
Forgot the blush that virgin fears impart
To modest cheeks, and borrowed one from art. [ Cowper ]
Art still followed where Rome's eagles flew. [ Pope ]
Art, however innocent, looks like deceiving. [ Aaron Hill ]
Personality is everything in art and poetry. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art. [ Goldsmith ]
Youth isn't an affectation. Youth is an art. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Coquetry is the art of successful deception. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
Darkness, thou first great parent of us all.
Thou art our great original! [ Yalden ]
I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt,
If one be better with them or without -
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read. [ J. G. Saxe ]
One to destroy is murder by the law.
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe;
To murder thousands takes a specious name.
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame. [ Young ]
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy, -
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is not hand, nor foot.
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose.
By any other name would smell as sweet. [ William Shakespeare ]
Love is the art of hearts, and heart of arts. [ Bailey ]
Flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone, thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. [ Milton ]
See what money can do: that can change
Men's manners; alter their conditions!
How tempestuous the slaves are without it!
O thou powerful metal! what authority
Is in thee! thou art the key to all mens
Mouths: with thee, a man may lock up the jaws
Of an informer; and without thee, he
Cannot open the lips of a lawyer. [ Richard Brome ]
The love of praise, however concealed by art,
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart. [ Young ]
What cannot art and industry perform,
When science plans the progress of their toil! [ Beattie ]
But should you lure
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook,
Behooves you then to ply your finest art. [ Thomson ]
Science and art are the handmaids of religion. [ Francois Delsarte ]
Others import yet nobler art from France,
Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance. [ Pope ]
Art thou a man? then feel for my wretchedness. [ Margaret in "Faust." ]
What art thou, thou idol ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers? [ William Shakespeare ]
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou light divine
Amid what dangers art thou doomed to shine! [ Crabbe ]
Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art.
For there thy habitation is the Heart -
The Heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
To fetters and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their Martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. [ Byron ]
What art thou? Have not I
An arm as big as thine? A heart as big?
Thy words, I grant, ate bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth. [ William Shakespeare ]
All Nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see. [ Pope ]
Do proper homage to thine idol's eyes.
But not too humbly, or she will despise
Thee and thy suit though told in moving tropes;
Disguise even tenderness, if thou art wise. [ Byron ]
Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men. [ Plato ]
The art of praising caused the art of pleasing. [ Voltaire ]
In this world of dreams, I have chosen my part.
To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love's truth or of light love's art,
Only the song of a secret bird. [ Swinburne ]
Immortal art! Where'er the rounded sky
Bends over the cradle where thy children lie,
Their home is earth, their herald every tongue. [ Holmes ]
With curious art the brain, too finely wrought,
Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought. [ Churchill ]
Oh, greatness! thou art but a flattering dream,
A watery bubble, lighter than the air. [ Tracy ]
The love of praise, however concealed by art
Reigns, more or less, and glows, in every heart:
The proud, to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it, but to make it sure. [ Young ]
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance. [ Pope ]
So work the honey-bees;
Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home.
To the tent royal of their emperor;
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum.
Delivering over to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone. [ William Shakespeare ]
I see thou art implacable, more deaf
To prayers than winds and seas. Yet winds to seas
Are reconciled at length, and sea to shore:
Thy anger, unappeasable, still rages
Eternal tempest never to be calmed. [ Milton ]
Different good, by art or nature given,
To different nations, makes their blessings even. [ Goldsmith ]
Fate wings, with every wish, the afflictive dart.
Each gift of nature, and each grace of art. [ Johnson ]
Live thou! and of the grain and husk, the grape,
And ivy berry, choose; and still depart
From death to death thro' life and life, and find
Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought
Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite,
But this main miracle, that thou art thou,
With power on thine own act and on the world. [ Alfred Tennyson ]
Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life. [ Jean Paul Richter ]
Here lies Dame Dorothy Peg,
Who never had issue except in her leg,
So great was her art, so deep was her cunning,
That while one leg stood, the other kept running. [ Epitaph ]
If thou art terrible to many, then beware of many. [ Ausonius ]
The teaching of art is the teaching of all things. [ John Ruskin ]
Happy thou art not;
For what thou hast not still thou striv'st to get,
And what thou hast, forgett'st. [ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure ]
On wrong
Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong. [ Pope ]
Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream.
And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream. [ George Linley ]
Into these ears of mine,
These credulous ears, he poured the sweetest words
That art or love could frame. [ Beaumont ]
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Such is the strength of art, rough things to shape. [ James HowelL ]
The highest subject of art for thinking men is man. [ Winkelmann ]
Genius! thou gift of Heaven! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine. [ Crabbe ]
The art of making much show with little substance.. [ Macaulay ]
Commonsense is nature's gift, but reason is an art. [ Beattie ]
Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit,
Or what is worse, be left by it?
Why dost thou load thyself when thou 'rt to fly.
Oh, man! ordained to die?
Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high,
Thou who art under ground to lie?
Thou sow'st and plantest, but no fruit must see.
For death, alas! is reaping thee. [ Cowley ]
Sculpture, the tongue on the balance of expression. [ Quoted by Emerson ]
Art and science have their meeting-point in method. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Death, thou art infinite; it is life that is little. [ Bailey ]
There is a great affinity between designing and art. [ Addison ]
O Death, O Beyond, Thou art sweet, thou art strange! [ Mrs. Browning ]
Money, thou bane and bliss and source of woe,
Whence com'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine. [ Herbert ]
Oh, Love, how perfect is thy mystic art,
Strengthening the weak, and trampling on the strong! [ Byron ]
What's come to perfection perishes,
Things learned on earth we shall practise in heaven;
Works done least rapidly Art most cherishes. [ Robert Browning ]
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last.
Shut thee from Heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
To learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing. [ Carlyle ]
Arts, commerce, and good government flourish together. [ T. G. Bergen ]
In morals, as in art, saying is nothing, doing is all. [ Renan ]
Lord, shall we grumble, when thy flames do scourge us?
Our sins breathe fire; that fire returns to purge us.
Lord, what an alchemist art thou, whose skill
Transmutes to perfect good from perfect ill! [ Francis Quarles ]
It is in the province of all countries to cherish art. [ Emperor Nero ]
Critics are men who have failed in literature and art. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]
Simplicity is Nature's first step, and the last of art. [ P. J. Bailey ]
Art is the gift of God, and must be used unto His glory [ Longfellow ]
Being a man, know and remember always that thou art one. [ Philemon Comicus ]
All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
It was Dante who called this noble art God's grandchild. [ Washington Allston ]
Labour is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art. [ Anon ]
Life is an art in which too many remain only dilettantes. [ Elizabeth, Queen of Roumania ]
Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art. [ Froude ]
Dead he is not, but departed - for the artist never dies. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Art thou anvil, be patient; art thou hammer, strike hard. [ German Proverb ]
No man can thoroughly master more than one art or science. [ Hazlitt ]
There's a charm in delivery, a magical art,
That thrills like a kiss from the lip to the heart;
It is the glance - the expression - the well-chosen word -
By whose magic the depths of the spirit are stirred.
The lip's soft persuasion - its musical tone:
Oh! such were the charms of that eloquent one! [ Mrs. Welby ]
The ideal itself is but truth clothed in the forms of art. [ Octave Feuillet ]
Music, rather than poetry, should be called the happy art.
[ Richter ]
Love is like medical science, the art of assisting nature. [ Dr. Lallemand ]
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. [ Novalis ]
There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face. [ William Shakespeare ]
Beauty is the ultimate principle and the highest aim of art. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
In morals good-will is everything, but in art it is ability. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
Nothing right can be accomplished in art without enthusiasm. [ Schumann ]
Religion is not in want of art; it rests on its own majesty. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Art is a jealous thing; it requires the whole and entire man. [ Michael Angelo ]
The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her. [ W. M. Hunt ]
All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature. [ Aristotle ]
It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. [ Beecher ]
Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything. [ Horace ]
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection. [ Michael Angelo ]
It is only the educated who can produce or appreciate high art. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Women are charmingly artificial, but they have no sense of art. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
In the study of the fine arts, they mutually assist each other. [ Beaconsfield ]
Government is an art above the attainment of an ordinary genius. [ South ]
Ah, to build, to build! that is the noblest art of all the arts. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
A passion for the dramatic art is inherent in the nature of man. [ Edwin Forrest ]
Thou art like to the spirit which thou comprehendest, not to me. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
O mysterious Night! thou art not silent; many tongues hast thou. [ Joanna Baillie ]
If thou art something, bring thy soul and interchange with mine. [ Schiller ]
Ha! let the devil seize thee by a hair, and thou art his forever. [ Lessing ]
Art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. [ John Opie ]
Through the arts the wonder of the ignorant multitude is excited. [ Anaxilaus ]
Seraphs share with thee knowledge; but art, O man, is thine alone! [ Schiller ]
So true it is, that nature has caprices which, art cannot imitate. [ Macaulay ]
Death! to the happy thou art terrible;
But how the wretched love to think of thee,
O thou true comforter! the friend of all Who have no friend beside! [ Southey ]
Thou art figured blind, and yet we borrow our best sight from thee. [ Massinger ]
Wherever there is a display of art, truth seems to us to be wanting.
There is no art whereby to find the mind's construction in the face. [ William Shakespeare ]
The greatest art of an able man is to know how to conceal his ability. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Thy shape in every part so clean as might instruct the sculptor's art. [ Dryden ]
Art must anchor in nature, or it is the sport of every breath of folly. [ Hazlitt ]
An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur. [ Disraeli ]
The art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words. [ Dryden ]
O time! whose verdicts mock our own, the only righteous judge art thou! [ T. W. Parsons ]
If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf. [ Thomas Fuller ]
My house, my house, though thou art small, thou art to me the Escurial. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Conversation is an art in which v. man has all mankind for competitors. [ Emerson ]
Women have a genius for love; men can only learn the art indifferently. [ De Maistre ]
You gain your point if your industrious art can make unusual words easy. [ Roscommon ]
It is a great art to be superior to others without letting them know it. [ H. W. Shaw ]
Time antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
There is one art of which man should be master, - the art of reflection. [ Coleridge ]
For his heart was in his work, and the heart giveth grace unto every art. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
There are certain epochs in art when simplicity is audacious originality. [ Achilles Poincelot ]
Nature, study, and practice must combine to ensure proficiency in any art. [ Aristotle ]
Art is a gift of Heaven, yet does it borrow its fire from earthly passion. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art. [ Addison ]
Sleep, to the homeless thou art home; the friendless find in thee a friend. [ Ebenezer Elliott ]
The great art of superiority is getting hold of people by their right side. [ Mirabeau ]
Sculpture and painting have an effect to teach us manners and abolish hurry. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art. [ Emerson ]
If thou modestly enjoy thy fame, thou art not unworthy to rank with the holy. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The learned understand the reason of the art, the unlearned feel the pleasure. [ Quinct ]
Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it. [ Hillard ]
By art and deceit men live half the year, and by deceit and art the other half. [ Proverb ]
Men shiver when thou art named; nature appalled shakes off her wonted firmness. [ Blair ]
Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing. [ Burke ]
Good-bye, proud world; I'm going home: Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine. [ Emerson ]
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant. [ Socrates ]
Archaeology is not only the handmaid of history, it is also the conservator of art. [ Lord Lytton ]
Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it. [ Cicero ]
Whatever may be our natural talents, the art of writing is not acquired all at once. [ Rousseau ]
Thou hast no faults, or I no faults can spy; Thou art all beauty, or all blindness I. [ Christopher Codrington ]
In art, to express the infinite one should suggest infinitely more than is expressed. [ Goethe ]
The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then to fix it in form. [ Francois Delsarte ]
The first essential to success in the art you practice is respect for the art itself. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned. [ Chamfort ]
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline. [ Ruskin ]
Faith in a better than that which appears is no less required by art than by religion. [ John Sterling ]
O nude truth! O true truth! How difficult thou art to find, and how difficult to utter! [ Sainte-Beuve ]
Thou art sworn as deeply to affect what we intend as closely to conceal what we impart. [ William Shakespeare ]
He that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it. [ Richard Steele ]
Thy wife is a constitution of virtues: she's the moon, and thou art the man in the moon. [ Congreve ]
It is not enough merely to possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practised. [ Cicero ]
This is an art which does mend nature, - change it rather; but the art itself is nature. [ William Shakespeare ]
Necessity, thou art the best of peacemaker, as well as the surest prompter of invention. [ Scott ]
From Egypt arts their progress made to Greece, wrapped in the fable of the golden fleece. [ Sir J. Denham ]
Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. [ Willmott ]
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool. [ Rabbi Ben Azai ]
Everything appertaining to the angler's art is cowardly, cruel, treacherous, and cat-like. [ Chatfield ]
True art is but the anti-type of nature, - the embodiment of discovered beauty in utility. [ James A. Garfield ]
The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality. [ Goethe ]
O human beauty, what a dream art thou, that we should cast our life and hopes away on thee! [ Barry Cornwall ]
Thou dwarf dressed up in giant's clothes, that showest far off still greater than thou art. [ Suckling ]
Good-will is everything in morals, but nothing in art; in art, capability alone is anything. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]
The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue. [ Cowper ]
Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult. [ Hippocrates ]
True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be. [ W. R. Alger ]
O Eloquence! thou violated fair, how thou art wooed and won to either bed of right or wrong! [ Havard ]
Let it make no difference to thee whether thou art cold or warm, if thou art doing thy duty. [ Marcus Aurelius ]
Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious aild merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. [ Bible ]
There is no point where art so nearly touches nature as when it appears in the form of words. [ J. G. Holland ]
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless. [ Balzac ]
In mediaeval art, truth is first, beauty second; in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. [ John Ruskin ]
Wrinkles of the face may be successfully hidden by art; not so with the wrinkles of the heart. [ Mme. Dufresnoy ]
Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, and the hardest in which to reach true excellence. [ Stedman ]
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason. [ Johnson ]
Of every noble work the silent part is best; of all expression, that which cannot be expressed. [ W. W. Story ]
To write well is to think well; there is no art of style distinct from the culture of the mind. [ Ernest Renan, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Society is like a large piece of frozen water; and skating well is the great art of social life. [ L. E. Landon ]
Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a man's face as like a man's face as it can. [ John Ruskin ]
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. [ Schiller ]
Blest be the art that can immortalize, - the art that baffles time's tyrannic claim to quench it. [ Cowper ]
Good artists give everything to their art and consequently are perfectly uninteresting themselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]
The art of painting does not proceed so much by intelligence as by sight and feeling and invention. [ Hamerton ]
Persons famous in the arts partake of the immortality of princes, and are upon a footing with them. [ Francis I ]
While black with storms the ruffled ocean rolls, and from the fisher's art defends her finny shoals. [ Sir R. Blackmore ]
Noble art is nothing less than the expression of a great soul; and great souls are not common things. [ John Ruskin ]
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face. [ Longfellow ]
Life, like some cities, is full of blind alleys, leading nowhere; the great art is to keep out of them. [ Bovee ]
Well the art thou knowest in soft forgetfulness to steep the eyes which sorrow taught to watch and weep. [ Mrs. Tighe ]
It is the treating of the common-place with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. [ J. F. Millet ]
It is not the defects but the beauties which should form our criterion of judgment in all matters of art. [ Chapin ]
It is an art without art, which has its beginning in falsehood, its middle in toil, and its end in poverty. [ From the Latin ]
The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves. [ Rochefoucauld ]
The grave - dread thing! - men shiver when thou art named; Nature, appalled, shakes off her wonted firmness. [ Blair ]
War--the trade of barbarians, and the art of bringing the greatest physical force to bear on a single point. [ Napoleon ]
A true artist should put a generous deceit on the spectators, and effect the noblest designs by easy methods. [ Burke ]
Thou art not required to search into the nature of God, but into the nature of the beings which he has created. [ Rückert ]
Fight valiantly today; and yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, for thou art framed of the firm truth of valor. [ William Shakespeare ]
True art, which requires free and healthy faculties, is opposed to pedantry, which crushes the soul under a burden. [ Hamerton ]
To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life. [ Johnson ]
We are now in want of an art to teach how books are to be read rather than to read them. Such an art is practicable. [ Disraeli ]
The cancer of jealousy on the breast can never wholly be cut out, if I am to believe great masters of the healing art. [ Jean Paul ]
In the art of design, color is to form what verse is to prose, - a more harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
Flirtation and coquetry are so nearly allied as to be identical; both are the art of successful and pleasing deception. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
We speak of profane arts, but there are none properly such; every art is holy in itself; it is the son of Eternal Light. [ Tegner ]
The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
It is no less merit to keep what you have got than to gain it. In the one there is chance; the other will be a work of art. [ Ovid ]
The art requires more delicacy in the practice than those conceive who can see nothing more in a quotation than an extract. [ Isaac Disraeli ]
If a book come from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. [ Carlyle ]
Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]
Her hair was not more sunny than her heart, though like a natural golden coronet it circled her dear head with careless art. [ Lowell ]
A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created. [ Tuckerman ]
The art of being able to make a good use of moderate abilities wins esteem and often confers more reputation than real merit. [ La Bruyere ]
It is only with the best judges that the highest works of art would lose none of their honor by being seen in their rudiments. [ J. F. Boyes ]
No good work whatever can be perfect; and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. [ John Ruskin ]
Happy child! the cradle is still to thee a vast space; but when thou art a man the boundless world will be too small for thee. [ Schiller ]
The art of conversation consists less in showing one's own wit than in giving opportunity for the display of the wit of others. [ La Bruyere ]
Thou fool! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mushroom; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of age. [ Carlyle ]
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change. [ John Ruskin ]
All the great captains have performed vast achievements by conforming with the rules of art - by adjusting efforts to obstacles. [ Napoleon I ]
Voltaire inscribed on a statue of Love: Whoever thou art, behold thy master! He rules thee, or has ruled thee, or will rule thee!
Art rests on a kind of religious sense, on a deep, steadfast earnestness; and on this account it unites so readily with religion. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Though thou art disappointed in a hope, never let hope fail thee; though one door is shut, there are thousands still open for thee. [ Rückert ]
Art, as far as it has ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild. [ Dante ]
Ah! would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way, from the eye, through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost! [ Lessing ]
No flattery, boy! an honest man cannot live by it; it is a little, sneaking art, which knaves use to cajole and soften fools withal. [ Otway ]
The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety. [ Dr. Johnson ]
The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people are satisfied with ornament. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Art needs solitude or misery or passion. Lukewarm zephyrs wilt it. It is a rock-flower flourishing by stormy blasts and in stony soil. [ Alex. Dumas ]
In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second; in modern art, execution is the first thing and thought the second. [ John Ruskin ]
Rules may teach us not to raise the arms above the head; but if passion carries them, it will be well done; passion knows more than art. [ Baron ]
Thou art never at any time nearer to God than when under tribulation; which He permits for the purification and beautifying of thy soul. [ Miguel Molinos ]
The art of conversation is to be prompt without being stubborn, to refute without argument, and to clothe great matters in a motley garb. [ Beaconsfield ]
The art of flatterers is to take advantage of the foibles of the great, to foster their errors, and never to give advice which may annoy. [ Moliere ]
I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them. [ Montaigne ]
O gentle sleep! my welcome breath shall hail thee midst our mortal strife, who art the very thief of life, the very portraiture of death. [ Alonzo de Ledesma ]
Art is based on a strong sentiment of religion, - on a profound and mighty earnestness; hence it is so prone to co-operate with religion. [ Goethe ]
The ordinary true, or purely real, cannot be the object of the arts. Illusion on a ground of truth - that is the secret of the fine arts. [ Joubert ]
Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art. [ Thoreau ]
Every school boy and school girl who has arrived at the age of reflection ought to know something about the history of the art of printing. [ Horace Mann ]
Power of imagination is regulated only by art, especially by poetry. There is nothing more frightful than imaginative faculty without taste. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
That were but a sorry art which could be comprehended all at once; the last point of which could be seen by one just entering its precincts. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance. [ Seneca ]
Logic is the art of thinking well; the mind, like the body, requires to be trained before it can use its powers in the most advantageous way. [ Kames ]
The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]
Artists may produce excellent designs, but they will avail little, unless the taste of the public is sufficiently cultivated to appreciate them. [ George C. Mason ]
What matters it that a soldier has a sword of dazzling finish, of the keenest edge, and finest temper, if he has never learned the art of fence. [ William Matthews ]
The most difficult thing in all works of art is to make that which has been most highly elaborated appear as if it had not been elaborated at all. [ Winkelmann ]
Rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]
That which exists in nature is a something purely individual and particular. Art, on the contrary, is essentially destined to manifest the general. [ Schlegel ]
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company. [ Swift ]
If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. [ William Shakespeare ]
Remembrance! celestial present, shadow of the blessings which are no longer! Thou art still a pleasure that consoles us for all those we have lost!
The highest art is always the most religious; and the greatest artist is always a devout man. A scoffing Raphael or Michael Angelo is not conceivable. [ Blackie ]
Invective may be a sharp weapon, but overuse blunts its edge. Even when the denunciation is just and true it is an error of art to indulge it too long. [ Tyndall ]
What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and thinking. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]
Art thou afraid of death, and dost thou wish to live for ever? Live in the whole that remains when thou hast long been gone{} (wenn du lange dahin bist). [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Before Greece, every thing in human literature and art was a rude and imperfect attempt. Since Greece, every thing has been a rude and imperfect imitation. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception, his spirit, and design, he is hardly below even the poet in liberal art. [ Steele ]
To smell a fresh turf of earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul. Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.
[ Fuller ]
Nothing lives in literature but that which has in it the vitality of the creative art; and it would be safe advice to the young to read nothing but what is old. [ K P. Whipple ]
The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past. [ Ruskin ]
In art the Greeks were the children of the Egyptians. The day may yet come when we shall do justice to the high powers of that mysterious and imaginative people. [ Beaconsfield ]
Music is the art of the prophets, the only art that can calm the agitation of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. [ M. Luther ]
The art of putting the right men in the right places is first in the science of government; but, that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult. [ Talleyrand ]
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster! [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The mother of useful arts is necessity; that of the fine arts is luxury. For father, the former has intellect; the latter, genius, which itself is a kind of luxury. [ Schopenhauer ]
Nature and art are too grand to go forth in pursuit of aims; nor is it necessary that they should, for there are relations everywhere, and relations constitute life. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertions of human nature; and what nature will he honor who honors not the human? [ Lavater ]
True art is like good company; it constrains us in the most charming way to recognise the standard after which and up to which our innermost being is shaped by culture. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
In old times men used their powers of painting to show the objects of faith; in later times they used the objects of faith that they might show their powers of painting. [ Ruskin ]
Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael. [ Goethe ]
Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies. [ Heine ]
To elevate and surprise is the great art of quackery and puffing; to raise a lively and exaggerated image in the mind, and take it by surprise before it can recover breath. [ Hazlitt ]
When the painter wishes to represent an event, he cannot place before us too great a number of personages; but he cannot employ too few when he wishes to portray an emotion. [ Joubert ]
For the first time, the best may err, art may persuade, and novelty spread out its charms. The first fault is the child of simplicity; but every other the offspring of guilt. [ Goldsmith ]
Ponder the lives of the glorious in art; or literature through all ages. What are they but records of toils and sacrifices, supported by the earnest hearts of their votaries? [ Henry T. Tuckerman ]
Artists will sometimes speak of Rome with disparagement or indifference while it is before them; but no artist ever lived in Rome and then left it, without sighing to return. [ Hillard ]
Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. [ Sir J. Reynolds ]
The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far-reaching, while the former is altogether wanting. [ Joubert ]
As it is a great point of art, when our matter requires it, to enlarge and veer out all sail, so to take it in and contract it is of no less praise when the argument doth ask it. [ Ben Jonson ]
The art of reading is to skip judiciously. Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. [ Hamerton ]
Music, if only listened to, and not scientifically cultivated, gives too much play to the feelings and fancy; the difficulties of the art draw forth the whole energies of the soul. [ Richter ]
Man is not merely a thinking, he is at the same time a sentient, being. He is a whole, a unity of manifold, internally connected powers, and to this whole must the work of art speak. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
The artist is the child in the popular fable, every one of whose tears was a pearl. Ah! the world, that cruel step-mother, beats the poor child the harder to make him shed more pearls. [ Heinrich Heine ]
Have something to tell, and tell it clearly, simply, without a trace of affectation or conscious effort at fine writing. I should advise the study of examples in this perfection of art. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]
Sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. [ John Ruskin ]
Life may as properly be called an art as any other, and the great incidents in it are no more to be considered as mere accidents than the severest members of a fine statue or a noble poem. [ Fielding ]
Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature. [ James Freeman Clarke ]
He is the rich man in whom the people are rich, and he is the poor man in whom the people are poor; and how to give access to the masterpieces of art and nature is the problem of civilisation. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's use. [ J. G. Holland ]
We want more loving knowledge to enable us to enjoy life, and we require to cultivate the art of making the most of the common means and appliances of enjoyment which lie about us on every side. [ Samuel Smiles ]
All the arts, which have a tendency to raise man in the scale of being, have a certain common band of union. and are connected, if I may be allowed to say so, by blood-relationship with one another. [ Cicero ]
He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations. [ La Bruyere ]
The object of science is knowledge; the objects of art are works. In art, truth is the means to an end; in science, it is the only end. Hence the practical arts are not to be classed among the sciences. [ Whewell ]
It is from Cadmus, the inventor of the alphabet, this ingenious art comes to us of painting words, speaking to the eyes, and by the different form of traced figures, giving color and body to the thoughts. [ De Brebeuf ]
I should have been a French atheist were it not for the recollection of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hand in hers, and make me say, on my bended knees, Our Father who art in heaven!
[ John Randolph ]
Art thou beautiful? Live, then, in accordance with the curious work and frame of the creation, and let the beauty of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the ornament of the beloved of God. [ Penn ]
The passions are the only orators that always persuade; they are, as it were, a natural art, the rules of which are infallible; and the simplest man with passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent without it. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Rhyme is the elementary art of the poet; but at the same time he must possess that vehement passion for melody that buoys his speech into song, his footsteps into tune, and makes his life move in a melodious rhythm. [ Bentivoglio ]
The misfortune in the state is that nobody can enjoy life in peace, but that everybody must govern, and in art, that nobody will enjoy what has been produced, but that every one wants to reproduce on his own account. [ Goethe ]
Logic is the art of convincing us of some truth; and eloquence a gift of the mind, which makes us master of the heart and spirit of others; which enables us to inspire them with, or persuade them of whatever we please. [ Bruyere ]
The art of navigation is one of the greatest achievements of human genius; man with its aid obtains a knowledge of the globe he inhabits, opens communications with, and extends his field of operations to all its parts. [ A. Brisbane ]
Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion. [ Goethe ]
In sculpture did ever anybody call the Apollo a fancy piece? Or say of the Laocoon how it might be made different? A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal. [ Emerson ]
Winckelmann wished to live with a work of art as a friend. The saying is true of pen and pencil. Fresh lustre shoots from Lycidas in a twentieth perusal. The portraits of Clarendon are mellowed by every year of reflection. [ Willmott ]
One of the first principles of decorative art is that in all manufactures ornament must hold a place subordinate to that of utility; and when, by its exuberance, ornament interferes with utility, it is misplaced and vulgar. [ G. C. Mason ]
In art there is a point of perfection, as of goodness or maturity in nature; he who is able to perceive it, and who loves it, has perfect taste; he who does not feel it, or loves on this side or that, has an imperfect taste. [ Bruyere ]
The power of painter or poet to describe rightly what he calls an ideal thing depends upon its being to him not an ideal, but a real thing. No man ever did or ever will work well but either from actual sight or sight of faith. [ Ruskin ]
No good book or good thing of any sort shows its best face at first; nay, the commonest quality in a true work of art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment. [ Carlyle ]
Stothard learned the art of combining colors by closely studying butterflies' wings; he would often say that no one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A burnt stick and a barn-door served Wilkie in lieu of pencil and canvas. [ Samuel Smiles ]
Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life; although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist. [ Beethoven ]
The chief art of learning is to attempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short flights, frequently repeated, the most lofty fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions. [ Locke ]
My first and last secret of Art is to get a thorough intelligence of the fact to be painted, represented, or, in whatever way, set forth - the fact deep as Hades, high as heaven, and written so, as to the visual face of it on this poor earth. [ Carlyle ]
Music is God's best gift to man, the only art of heaven given to earth, the only art of earth that we take to heaven. But music, like all our gifts, is given us in the germ. It is for us to unfold and develop it by instruction and cultivation. [ Charles W. Landon ]
The study of art is a taste at once engrossing and unselfish, which may be indulged without effort, and yet has the power of exciting the deepest emotions, - a taste able to exercise and to gratify both the nobler and softer parts of our nature. [ Guizot ]
Art does not imitate nature, but it founds itself on the study of nature, - takes from nature the selections which best accord with its own intention, and then bestows on them that which nature does not possess, viz. the mind and the soul of man. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Whatever may be the means, or whatever the more immediate end of any kind of art, all of it that is good agrees in this, that it is the expression of one soul talking to another, and is precious according to the greatness of the soul that utters it. [ Ruskin ]
The one thing that marks the true artist is a clear perception and a firm, bold hand, in distinction from that imperfect mental vision and uncertain touch which give us the feeble pictures and the lumpy statues of the mere artisans on canvas or in stone. [ O. W. Holmes ]
All men are in some degree impressed by the face of the world; some men even to delight. This love of beauty is taste. Others have the same love in such excess that, not content with admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms. The creation of beauty is art. [ Emerson ]
There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration. [ Anna Katharine Green ]
Those who have arrived at any very eminent degree of excellence in the practice of an art or profession have commonly been actuated by a species of enthusiasm in their pursuit of it. They have kept one object in view amidst all the vicissitudes of time and fortune. [ John Knox ]
The only kind of sublimity which a painter or sculptor should aim at is to express by certain proportions and positions of limbs and features that strength and dignity of mind, and vigor and activity of body, which enables men to conceive and execute great actions. [ Burke ]
There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small. [ Goethe ]
Grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest us with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. [ De Quincey ]
Nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. [ Voltaire ]
O blessed health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. [ Sterne ]
Art employs method for the symmetrical formation of beauty, as science employs it for the logical exposition of truth; but the mechanical process is, in the last, ever kept visibly distinct, while in the first it escapes from sight amid the shows of color and the curves of grace. [ Bulwer-Lytton ]
Oratory is the huffing and blustering spoiled child of a semi-barbarous age. The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason; and the art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and readers wise enough to read. [ Colton ]
What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting. [ Schlegel ]
Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture, or philosophy, he makes a bad husband, and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will imbitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work. [ Emerson ]
So long as thou art ignorant, be not ashamed to learn : he that is so fondly modest, not to acknowledge his own defects of knowledge, shall in time, be so foully impudent to justify his own ignorance; ignorance is the greatest of all infirmities, and, justified, the chiefest of all follies. [ Quarks ]
Great art dwells in all that is beautiful; but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts Nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or altering whatever is objectionable. [ John Ruskin ]
Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty. This foundation is somewhat covered and veiled in nature. Art brings it out, and gives it more transparent forms. It is here that art, when it knows well its power and resources, engages in a struggle with nature in which it may have the advantage. [ Victor Cousin ]
Much that is published as a novel is only anonymous biography. Many a man who is a bore in conversation may have qualities which give indescribable charms to narrative; and the egotist, if he only have the art to conceal his identity, can then hold the reader by the powerful grasp of sympathy. [ R. S. Mackenzie ]
The flitting sunbeam has been grasped and made to do man's bidding in place of the painter's pencil. And although Franklin tamed the lightning, yet not until yesterday has its instantaneous flash been made the vehicle of language: thus in the transmission of thought annihilating space and time. [ Professor Robinson ]
It is a great mortification to the vanity of man that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of Nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the underworkman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces which come from the hand of the master. [ Hume ]
I once asked a distinguished artist what place he gave to labor in art. Labor,
he in effect said, is the beginning, the middle, and the end of art.
Turning then to another - And you,
I inquired, what do you consider as the great force in art?
Love,
he replied. In their two answers I found but one truth. [ Bovee ]
The first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, - a general preparation for whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colors is very properly called the language of the art. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]
Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. [ Ruskin ]
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]
The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late. [ Goethe ]
Every common dauber writes rascal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor resemblance. But the works of a master require no index. His features and coloring are taken from nature. The impression they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it possible to mistake his characters. [ Junius ]
Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass. [ Hazlitt ]
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; the passions are powerful pleaders, and their very silence, like that of Garrick, goes directly to the soul, but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in; it is the quackery of eloquence, and deals in nostrums, not in cures. [ Colton ]
Art neither belongs to religion, nor to ethics; but, like these, it brings us nearer to the Infinite, one of the forms of which it manifests to us. God is the source of all beauty, as of all truth, of all religion, of all morality. The most exalted object, therefore, of art is to reveal in its own manner the sentiment of the Infinite. [ Victor Cousin ]
There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than the adoration of the beautiful. All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste without respect to the object. They purify the thoughts as tragedy purifies the passions. Their accidental effects are not worth consideration, - there are souls to whom even a vestal is not holy. [ Schlegel ]
A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
The study of art possesses this great and peculiar charm, that it is absolutely unconnected with the struggles and contests of ordinary life. By private interests, by political questions, men are deeply divided, and set at variance; but beyond and above all such party strifes, they are attracted and united by a taste for the beautiful in art. [ Guizot ]
Those critics who, in modern times, have the most thoughtfully analyzed the laws of aesthetic beauty concur in maintaining that the real truthfulness of all works of imagination - sculpture, painting, written fiction - is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent the positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art. in science, and in every pursuit in life. Human knowledge is but an accumulation of small facts made by successive generations of men - the little bits of knowledge and experience carefully treasured up by them growing at length into a mighty pyramid. [ Samuel Smiles ]
The dramatist, like the poet, is born, not made. There must be inspiration back of all true and permanent art, dramatic or otherwise, and art is universal: there is nothing national about it. Its field is humanity, and it takes in all the world; nor does anything else afford the refuge that is provided by it from all troubles and all the vicissitudes of life. [ William Winter ]
Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him. [ Heinrich Heine ]
The language of the heart - the language which comes from the heart
and goes to the heart
- is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language - difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied. [ Bovee ]
There is nothing so remote from vanity as true genius. It is almost as natural for those who are endowed with the highest powers of the human mind to produce the miracles of art, as for other men to breathe or move. Correggio, who is said to have produced some of his divinest works almost without having seen a picture, probably did not know that he had done anything extraordinary. [ Hazlitt ]
Since I have known God in a saving manner, painting, poetry, and music have had charms unknown to me before. I have received what I suppose is a taste for them, or religion has refined my mind and made it susceptible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful. O, how religion secures the heightened enjoyment of those pleasures which keep so many from God, by their becoming a source of pride! [ Henry Martyn ]
The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result, [ John Mason Good ]
It is particularly worth observation that the more we magnify, by the assistance of glasses, the works of nature, the more regular and beautiful they appear, while it is quite different in respect to those of art, for when they are examined through a microscope we are astonished to find them so rough, so coarse and uneven, although they have been done with all imaginable care, by the best workmen. [ Sterne ]
It is not so much in buying pictures as in being pictures, that you can encourage a noble school. The best patronage of art is not that which seeks for the pleasures of sentiment in a vague ideality, nor for beauty of form in a marble image, but that which educates your children into living heroes, and binds down the flights and the fondnesses of the heart into practical duty and faithful devotion. [ Ruskin ]
In eloquence, the great triumphs of the art are when the orator is lifted above himself; when consciously he makes himself the mere tongue of the occasion and the hour, and says what cannot but be said. Hence the term abandonment,
to describe the self-surrender of the orator. Not his will, but the principle on which he is horsed, the great connection and crisis of events, thunder in the ear of the crowd. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
The refining influence is the study of art, which is the science of beauty; and I find that every man values every scrap of knowledge in art, every observation of his own in it, every hint he has caught from another. For the laws of beauty are the beauty of beauty, and give the mind the same or a higher joy than the sight of it gives the senses. The study of art is of high value to the growth of the intellect. [ Emerson ]
Excellence in art is to be attained only by active effort, and not by passive impressions; by the manly overcoming of difficulties, by patient struggle against adverse circumstance, by the thrifty use of moderate opportunities. The great artists were not rocked and dandled into eminence, but they attained to it by that course of labor and discipline which no man need go to Rome or Paris or London to enter upon. [ Hillard ]
The habit of committing our thoughts to writing is a powerful means of expanding the mind, and producing a logical and systematic arrangement of our views and opinions. It is this which gives the writer a vast superiority, as to the accuracy and extent of his conceptions, over the mere talker. No one can ever hope to know the principles of any art or science thoroughly who does not write as well as read upon the subject. [ Blakey ]
The mother, under whose sole influence the child is for years, from whom it acquires its tastes and character, should not only be educated, but educated in the most thorough manner, and have her mind stored with varied learning, so that she may be able to answer the multitude of questions that will be put to her by her inquisitive child on art, science, literature, and religion, and thus to stimulate his curiosity, and awaken his mind. [ E. B. Ramsay ]
Art, not less eloquently than literature, teaches her children to venerate the single eye. Remember Matsys. His representations of miser-life are breathing. A forfeited bond twinkles in the hard smile. But follow him to an altar-piece. His Apostle has caught a stray tint from his usurer. Features of exquisite beauty are seen and loved; but the old nature of avarice frets under the glow of devotion. Pathos staggers on the edge of farce. [ Willmott ]
A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, - the wise, the good, or the great man, - very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. [ Joseph Addison ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]
We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art: but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning. [ Montaigne ]
We see a world of pains taken and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and after all the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want commonsense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. [ Steele ]
There are chords in the human heart - strange varying strings - which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view. [ Dickens ]
The names of great painters are like passing-bells: in the name of Velasquez you hear sounded the fall of Spain; in the name of Titian, that of Venice; in the name of Leonardo, that of Milan; in the name of Raphael, that of Rome. And there is profound justice in this, for in proportion to the nobleness of the power is the guilt of its use for purposes vain or vile; and hitherto the greater the art, the more surely has it been used, and used solely, for the decoration of pride or the provoking of sensuality. [ Ruskin ]
Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation. [ Washington Irving ]
He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and unlearned; the mind cannot be idle; if it is not taken up with one thing, it attends to another through choice or necessity; and the degree of previous capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. [ Hazlitt ]
I have very often lamented and hinted my sorrow, in several speculations, that the art of painting is made so little use of to the improvement of manners. When we consider that it places the action of the person represented in the most agreeable aspect imaginable, - that it does not only express the passion or concern as it sits upon him who is drawn, but has under those features the height of the painter's imagination, - what strong images of virtue and humanity might we not expect would be instilled into the mind from the labors of the pencil! [ Steele ]
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed with the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are leveled and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings. [ Dr. Johnson ]
As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions. Some are disposed to view logic as a peculiar method of reasoning, and not as it is, a method of unfolding and analysing our reason. They have, in short, considered logic as an art of reasoning. The logician's object being, not to lay down principles by which one may reason, but by which all must reason, even though they are not distinctly aware of them - to lay down rules not which may be followed with advantage, but which cannot possibly be deviated from in sound reasoning. [ R. Whately ]
Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge: it is immortal as the heart of men. If the labors of the men of science should ever create any revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will then sleep no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of the respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on. as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. [ Wordsworth ]