Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Near the end of his life, Henri Matisse's preferred attire was evening wear, by which I mean pajamas.
Few contemporary artists mined the space between the ordinary and the strange better than Orozco did.
Large fortunes are all founded either on the occupation of land, or lending or the taxation of labor.
My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics.
You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature.
For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.
Artists are expected to talk about their work but writers aren't expected to talk about their writing.
The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.
I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
Better a child should be ignorant of a thousand truths than have consecrated in its heart a single lie.
Warhol turned to photographs of stars, as the Renaissance turned to antiquities, to find images of gods.
When you feel your book is the height of irrelevance you can return to the excitement of the daily news.
The secret of food lies in memory - of thinking and then knowing what the taste of cinnamon or steak is.
The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play, not with form, but with time.
You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.
The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them.
Music when healthy, is the teacher of perfect order, and when depraved, the teacher of perfect disorder.
Why is one man richer than another? Because he is more industrious, more persevering and more sagacious.
Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made great man.
It is far better to give work that is above a person, than to educate the person to be above their work.
Doing is the great thing, for if people resolutely do what is right, they come in time to like doing it.
A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.
Milton saw not, and Beethoven heard not, but the sense of beauty was upon them, and they fain must speak.
Your art is to be the praise of something that you love. It may only be the praise of a shell or a stone.
Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty.
When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase.
Make an enemy of jealousy and envy. As fast and soon as you can…. The art world is high school with money.
If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.
If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
Depend upon it, the first universal characteristic of all great art is Tenderness, as the second is Truth.
Government and cooperation are in all things the laws of life. Anarchy and competition, the laws of death.
I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.
I cannot but think it an evil sign of a people when their houses are built to last for one generation only.
How long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it?
Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy.Bothyourreligionand policy must be basedon it.
Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
It's impossible in our postmodern era for anyone to be original - for anybody to do what Jackson Pollock did.
The animal has secrets which, unlike the secrets of caves, mountains, seas are specifically addressed to man.
'Fahrenheit 9/11' is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event.
I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influence which may bring upon you any noble feeling.
I would willingly stand at street corners, hat in hand, begging passerby to drop their unused minutes into it.
I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.
If I go to London, everyone wants to talk about Damien Hirst. I'm just not interested in him. Never have been.
Curiosity is a gift, a capacity of pleasure in knowing, which if you destroy, you make yourself cold and dull.
There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.