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

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

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.

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

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

Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.

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

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”

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

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

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