Quotes about art
Painters, poets and critics on making things and looking at them. Quotes about art and taste for creative accounts and portfolio posts.
The library has 1,175 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 quotes about art
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As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
William Shakespeare Pericles, Act v. Sc. 2 -
Dreams, books, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good. Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.
William Wordsworth Personal Talk, Stanza 3 -
Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!—The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.
William Wordsworth Personal Talk, Stanza 4 -
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,—A stage, where every man must play a part; And mine a sad one.
William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1 -
The rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid’s music.
William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know.
William Cowper The Task, Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 285 -
Whether the charmer sinner it or saint it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.
Alexander Pope Moral Essays. Epistle ii, Line 15 -
There is no frigate like a book To take us lands away, Nor any coursers like a page Of prancing poetry.
Emily Dickinson Poems, Third Series -
Thence to the famous orators repair, Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence Wielded at will that fierce democratie, Shook the arsenal, and fulmin’d over Greece, To Macedon, and Artaxerxes’ throne.
John Milton Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 267 -
For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
Samuel Butler Hudibras, Part i. Canto i. Line 463 -
Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words or in good order.
Francis Bacon Of Discourse -
For I am nothing, if not critical.
William Shakespeare Othello, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
Still govern thou my song, Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. VII -
Thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers.
John Milton Paradise Lost -
The music in my heart I bore Long after it was heard no more.
William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper -
While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.
Alexander Pope The Dunciad, Book i. Line 93 -
In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part; For the gods see everywhere.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Builders -
And he whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad.
Alexander Pope Prologue to Satires -
A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.
Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, Part ii. Line 156 -
Where music dwells Lingering and wandering on as loth to die, Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.
William Wordsworth Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Pt. iii., xliii -
A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
Oliver Goldsmith Retaliation, Line 63 -
To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art.
Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village, Line 253 -
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Lord Byron Don Juan, Canto iii. Stanza 88 -
’Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print; A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.
Lord Byron English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Line 51 -
Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Julian and Maddalo -
With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam, Canto v. Stanza 23 -
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli Speech, Jan. 24, 1860 -
A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!
Oliver Wendell Holmes The Voiceless -
Whatever hath been written shall remain, Nor be erased nor written o’er again; The unwritten only still belongs to thee: Take heed, and ponder well, what that shall be.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Morituri Salutamus -
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; ’Twas only that when he was off he was acting.
Oliver Goldsmith Retaliation, Line 101 -
There is no surer way of evading the world than by Art; and no surer way of uniting with it than by Art.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 485 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Various maxims of the ancients, which we are wont to repeat again and again, had a meaning quite different from that which is apt to attach to them in later times.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 438 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Life holds the mirror up to art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by painter or sculptor or realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Literature decays only as men become more and more corrupt.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 466 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
Even in the moments of highest happiness and deepest misery we need the Artist.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Maxims and Reflections, Literature and Art, No. 486 · translated by T. Bailey Saunders -
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply on what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection; through art and through art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
I hate the manner in which purple takes away the luster of vermilion. I hate the way in which the songs of Chang confound the music of the Ya. I hate those who with their sharp mouths overthrow kingdoms and families.
Confucius Analects, XVII.18 · translated by James Legge -
There may be those who act without knowing why. I do not do so. Hearing much and selecting what is good and following it; seeing much and keeping it in memory: this is the second style of knowledge.
Confucius Analects, VII.27 · translated by James Legge -
If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with the rites of propriety? If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with music?
Confucius Analects, III.3 · translated by James Legge -
No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.
Miguel de Cervantes -
Let the will be set on the path of duty. Let every attainment in what is good be firmly grasped. Let perfect virtue be accorded with. Let relaxation and enjoyment be found in the polite arts.
Confucius Analects, VII.6 · translated by James Legge -
No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.
Julius Caesar -
I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing.
Alfred Tennyson In Memoriam. xxi, Stanza 6 -
Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honour; and we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.
Martin Luther -
Poetry is the music of the soul; and, above all, of great and feeling souls.
Voltaire -
People of education are not called poets or mathematicians, etc.; but they are all these, and judges of all these. No one guesses what they are.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 34 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Perspective determines that point in the art of painting. But who shall determine it in truth and morality?
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 381 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness and Beauty.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 26 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Deep vers’d in books, and shallow in himself.
John Milton Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 327 -
[Chance gives rise to thoughts, and chance removes them; no art can keep or acquire them.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 370 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express.
Francis Bacon Essays -
The XIX century was the Age of Faith in Fine Art. The results are before us.
George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists -
Happy who in his verse can gently steer From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.
John Dryden The Art of Poetry, Canto i. Line 75 -
As all men have some access to primary truth, so all have some art or power of communication in the head, but only in the artist does it descend into the hand.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
The conscious utterance of thought by speech or action, to any end, is art.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Society and Solitude -
If you criticise a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and instead of the poet, are censuring your own caricature of him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson The Conduct of Life