Archive

Quotes

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

—Flannery O’Connor, 1964

Art lives from constraints and dies from freedom.

—Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1480

I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.

—Duke of Wellington, c. 1810

If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

—Mencius, c. 330 BC

Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.

—W.H. Auden, c. 1940

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.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1860

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it—and when I first did it, I felt perverse.

—Diane Arbus, c. 1950

Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.

—Dante, c. 1315

Modesty is a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.

—Miguel de Cervantes, 1615

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1887

All art is a revolt against man’s fate.

—André Malraux, 1951

When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1657

The first mistake of art is to assume that it’s serious.

—Lester Bangs, 1971