Art and Literature
Art and Literature
See Also:BOOKS, MUSIC, POETS/POETRY, WRITERS/WRITING
- Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds —Barnett Newman, New York Times Book Review, February 18, 1968
- Art is a jealous mistress —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Art is an absolute mistress —Charlotte Cushman
- Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization —Lincoln Steffens
- Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold they can no longer be worn —John Updike
- Art is like religion. As long as you do your best to stamp it out of existence, it flourishes in spite of you, like weeds in a garden. But if you try and cultivate it, and it becomes a popular success, it goes to the dogs at once —Jane Wardle
- Art is science in the flesh —Jean Cocteau
- Art is wild as a cat and quite separate from civilization —Stevie Smith
- The artist, like the neurotic, has withdrawn from an unsatisfying reality into this world of imagination; but, unlike the neurotic, he knew how to find a way back from it and once more to get a firm foothold in reality —Sigmund Freud
- Artists … like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give —Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Art, like eros, stirs senses to full life, demands devotion —Steven Millhauser
- Art like life is an open secret —Lawrence Durrell
- Art, like life, should be free, since both are experimental —George Santayana
- Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere —G. K. Chesterton
- Art, like the microscope, reveals many things that the naked eye does not see —George Moore
- As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life —Sir John Lubbock
- Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness —George Jean Nathan
- I have seen the beauty evaporate from poems and pictures, exquisite not so long ago, like hoar frost before the morning sun —W. Somerset Maugham
- In art, as in diet, as in spiritual life, the same rules of elimination apply: the more one can do without the better —Anne Freemantle
- In art, as in love, instinct is enough —Anatole France
- In art, as in politics, there is no such thing as gratitude —George Bernard Shaw
- In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others —Andre Maurois, New York Times, April 14, 1963
- (Nine times out of ten,) in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed —H. L. Mencken
- Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged —Douglas Jerrold
- Literature, like virtue, is its own reward —Lord Chesterfield
- Literature’s like a big railway station … there’s a train starting every minute —Edith Wharton
In her short story, The Angel at the Grave, Wharton continues the simile as follows: “People are not going to hang around the waiting room. If they can’t get to a place when they want to, they go somewhere else.”
- It [empty white canvas] looks like an anemic nun in a snow storm —James Rosenquist, quoted in television documentary about his work, 1987
- Modern paintings are like women. You’ll never enjoy them if you try to understand them —Harold Coffin
- Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication —Rebecca West
- Naivete in art is like zero in a number; its importance depends on the figure it is united with —Henry James
- One must act in painting as in life, directly —Pablo Picasso, Time interview
- Two modern paintings … like Rorschach inkblots gone to seed —Pat Conroy
- A painting requires as much cunning as the perpetration of a crime —Edgar Degas
- A picture is a poem without words —Latin proverb
- (Some of the canvases had no pictures at all, just colors,) swirls and patches and planes of color, thickened and lumped, like hunks of emotion —Dan Wakefield
- Without favor art is like a windmill without wind —John Ray’s Proverbs
- The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period —Samuel Butler