Here are some of my favorite quotations to inspire and inform people in the arts.
ARTISTS ARE POWERFULLY MOTIVATED
- “Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything.” (Horace)
- “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon one can never resist or understand.” (George Orwell)
- “Art is a kind of illness.” (Giacomo Puccini)
- “The excellency of every art is its intensity.” (John Keats)
- “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” (Walter Pater)
- “Art is the only thing that can goes on mattering once it has stopped hurting.” (Elizabeth Bowen)
- “Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart go together.” (John Ruskin)
- “Gifts like genius, I often think, means only an infinite capacity for taking pains.” (Jane E. Hopkins)
- “The incurable itch of writing possesses many.” (Juvenal)
- “The composer’s principal problem is that of recapturing in every phase of his work …the energy which keeps it going…of bringing, in other words, the requisite amount of energy to bear on every detail, as well as constantly on his vision of the whole.” (Roger Sessions)
- “The artist does not see things as they are, but as he is.” (Arthur Tonnelle)
THE OVERRIDING PURPOSES OF ART HAVE BEEN THE SAME SINCE THE CAVE PAINTERS–OR BEFORE
- “It is art that makes life, makes intensity, makes importance…and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” (Henry James)
- “Art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass.” (Walter Pater)
- “Art is not an end in itself, but a means of addressing humanity.” (Mussorgsky)
- The artist “speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives, to our sense of pity and beauty, and pain.” (Joseph Conrad)
- “Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.” (Leo Tolstoy)
- “The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that express themselves first in the human person.” (Havelock Ellis)
- “It is through art and through art only, that we realize our perfection; through art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.” (Oscar Wilde)
- “The most truly satisfactory reward a writer ever gets is the moment he holds that book in his hand and says, ‘This is my baby”….It is an accomplished fact and it is yours.” (John O’Hara).
- “Great art is as irrational as great music. It is made with its own loveliness.” (George Jean Nathan)
- A writer must leave “no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed–love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” (William Faulkner)
- “All art constantly aspires toward the condition of music.” (Walter Pater)
A WORK OF ART SHOULD BE CONSISTENTLY GOOD THROUGHOUT
- “A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line.” (Joseph Conrad)
LIKE WHAT YOU’RE WORKING ON
- I was working on a story and it was very difficult for me to go on and I dawdled and dawdled. Then I realized I didn’t like the characters, didn’t like the plot, didn’t like anything about the piece though the quality of the writing was good. I stopped when I read: “One may do whatever one likes in art: the only thing is to make sure that one does like it.” (Robert Browning)
- “Until the artist is satisfied with what he is doing, he continues shaping and reshaping. He stops when he thinks it’s good.” (John Dewey)
Among the topics to come in the next posts:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SMALL ART AND GREAT ART
UNDERSTAND THAT IT IS NOT POSSIBE TO DESCRIBE THE COMPLETE, COMPLEX STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS AN EXPERT ARTIST HAS ACQUIRED
THE VALUE IN ALL ARTS OF SUCCINCTNESS, INCLUDING ONLY WHAT IS ESSENTIAL
ARTISTS ARE BY NATURE INDEPENDENT, RESTLESS, AND CONFIDENT OF THEIR TALENT
MOST ARTISTS HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR
HOW ART WORKS: THE ROLE OF THE ARTIST
And more.
© 2017 David J. Rogers
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