Art And Individuality Quotes

I've been accustomed to mysteries, holy and otherwise, since I was a child. Some of us care for orphans, amass fortunes, raise protests or Nielsen ratings; some of us take communion or whiskey or poison. Some of us take lithium and antidepressants, and most everyone believes these pills are fundamentally wrong, a crutch, a sign of moral weakness, the surrender of art and individuality. Bullshit. Such thinking guarantees tradgedy for the bipolar. Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I'm wrong about lithium. They don't have a clue. ~ David Lovelace

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art. ~ Douglas Sirk

Militant atheists seek to discredit religion based on a highly selective reading of history. There was a time not long ago - just a couple of centuries - when the Western world was saturated by religion. Militant atheists are quick to attribute many of the most unfortunate aspects of history to religion, yet rarely concede the immense debt that civilization owes to various monotheist religions, which created some of the world's greatest literature, art, and architecture; led the movement to abolish slavery; and fostered the development of science and technology. One should not invalidate these achievements merely because they were developed for religious purposes. If much of science was originally a religious endeavor, does that mean science is not valuable? Is religiously motivated charity not genuine? Is art any less beautiful because it was created to express devotion to God? To regret religion is to regret our civilization and its achievements. ~ Bruce Sheiman

Be thankful not only that you are an individual but also that others are different. The world needs all kinds, but it also needs to respect and use that individuality. ~ Donald Laird

Creating art is painful. It takes time, practice, and the courage to stand alone. ~ Maria Semple

Entering a garden like Bomarzo was like succumbing to a dream. Every detail was intended to produce a specific effect on the mind and body, to excite and soothe the senses like a drug. To awaken the unconscious self. ~ Linda Lappin

I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come out of him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve ... I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Language, after all, is only the use of symbols, and Art also can only affect us through symbols. ~ George Henry Lewes

Life is seen as an ongoing war between art and philistinism - and although the philistines may win some of the battles, it is literature that always wins the war. ~ Helon Habila

To me, the art of movies is to take a two-dimensional image and give the illusion of depth. ~ William Friedkin

Our culture is something that has sustained us for thousands and thousands of years and will continue to do so in generations to come. ~ Hetti Perkins

Wall-to-wall masterpieces, after all, ought to be preferred to wall-to-wall decorative arts, even if the decorative arts are of the highest quality peppered and salted with dukes and tiaras. ~ Joseph Alsop

Remember that the fool in the eyes of the gods and the fool in the eyes of man are very different. One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of Art in its revolution or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greeks, of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a one too long. Be so no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right ~ Oscar Wilde

The late Seventies was the death of the manufacturing age in the United States. It was also a time when the Pictures Generation artists were getting started. They co-opted the language of advertising. The factory disappeared, and weirdly, so did the art object - it was the age of making gestures, not objects. ~ Rachel Kushner

I believe that art is the highest expression of the human spirit. ~ I believe that we yearn to transcend the merely finite and ephemeral; to participate in something mysterious and communal called "culture" – and that this yearning is as strong in our species as the yearning to reproduce the species. ~ Through the local or regional, through our individual voices, we work to create art that will speak to others who know nothing of us. In our very obliqueness to one another, an unexpected intimacy is born. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The whole of the American Dream has been based on the chance to get ahead, for one's self or one's children. Would this country have ever reached the point it has if the individual had always been refused the rewards of his labors and dangers? ~ James Adams

Astronomy was born of superstition; eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; and even moral philosophy of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices. ~ Jean-Baptiste Rousseau

It is impossible for a Die, with such determin'd force and direction, not to fall on such determin'd side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such determin'd side, and therefore I call it Chance, which is nothing but the want of art ... ~ John Arbuthnot

Life is not always deep, mostly it's just random. But it's different in art. In art you can choose to show some things and hide others. And suddenly there's meaning to find in the chaos. ~ Oren Lavie

Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right. ~ Jean Dubuffet

Individuality is a real power inherent in all and the development and consequent expression of this power enables one to assume the responsibility of directing his own footsteps rather than stampeding after some self-assertive bell-wether. ~ Charles F. Haanel

For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities and clouds become solid present. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

The dramatic art would appear to be rather a feminine art; it contains in itself all the artifices which belong to the province ofwoman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of woman. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

My mother told me to keep on singing, and that kept me working through the cotton fields. She said God has his hand on you. You'll be singing for the world someday. ~ Johnny Cash

I think that sex, drugs, art and religion very much overlap with one another and sometimes one becomes another. ~ Brian Eno

What if a demon crept after thee into thy loneliest loneliness some day or night, and said to thee: "This life, as thou livest it at present, and hast lived it, thou must live it once more, and also innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh, and all the unspeakably small and great in thy life must come to thee again, and all in the same series and sequence - and similarly this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and similarly this moment, and I myself. The eternal sand-glass of existence will ever be turned once more, and thou with it, thou speck of dust!" - Wouldst thou not throw thyself down and gnash thy teeth, and curse the demon that so spake? Or hast thou once experienced a tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: "Thou art a God, and never did I hear anything so divine!" If that thought acquired power over thee as thou art, it would transform thee, and perhaps crush thee; the question with regard to all and everything: "Dost thou want this once more, and also for innumerable times?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon thy activity! Or, how wouldst thou have to become favourably inclined to thyself and to life, so as to long for nothing more ardently than for this last eternal sanctioning and sealing? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We like to think of film and music as art, but actually art is something that is not restricted. ~ Ahmed Best

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

When we changed the channel from violent television to tamer fare, kids just ended up learning the advanced skills of clique formation, friendship withdrawal, and the art of the insult. ~ Po Bronson

Whichever wine was within, it was decidedly not identical to its neighbors. On the contrary, the contents of the bottle in his hand was the product of a history as unique and complex as that of a nation, or a man. In its color, aroma, and taste, it would certainly express the idiosyncratic geology and prevailing climate of its home terrain. But in addition, it would express all the natural phenomena of its vintage. In a sip, it would evoke the timing of that winter's thaw, the extent of that summer's rain, the prevailing winds, and the frequency of clouds. Yes, a bottle of wine was the ultimate distillation of time and place; a poetic expression of individuality itself. ~ Amor Towles

The only thing
I tell you this straight from the heart
that disgusts me in Salzburg is that one can't have any proper social intercourse with those people
and that music does not have a better reputation ... For I assure you, without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature! ... A man of mediocre talents always remains mediocre, may he travel or not
but a man of superior talents, which I cannot deny myself to have without being blasphemous, becomes
bad, if he always stays in the same place. If the archbishop would trust me, I would soon make his music famous; that is surely true. ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

What art Thou then, my God? What, but the Lord God? For who is Lord but the Lord?or who is God save our God? Most highest, most good, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful, yet most just; most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, yet most strong; stable, yet incomprehensible; unchangeable, yet all-changing; never new, never old; all-renewing, and bringing age upon the proud and they know it not; ever working, ever at rest; still gathering, yet lacking nothing; supporting, filling, and overspreading; creating, nourishing, and maturing; seeking, yet having all things. Thou lovest, without passion; art jealous, without anxiety; repentest, yet grievest not; art angry, yet serene; changest Thy works, Thy purpose unchanged; receivest again what Thou findest, yet didst never lose; never in need, yet rejoicing in gains; never covetous, yet exacting usury. Thous receivest over and above, that Thou may owe; and who hath ought that is not Thine? Thou payest debts, owing nothing; remittest debts, losing nothing. And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any man when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to he who speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

The worst feature of the Common Core is its anti-humanistic, utilitarian approach to education. It mistakes what a child is and what a human being is for. That is why it has no use for poetry, and why it boils the study of literature down to the scrambling up of some marketable "skill" [ ... ] you don't read good books to learn about what literary artists do ... you learn about literary art so that you can read more good books and learn more from them. It is as if Thomas Gradgrind had gotten hold of the humanities and turned them into factory robotics. ~ Anthony Esolen

Some people like living in black and white worlds. Let them stay there. Appreciate all the colors you see in your world though. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

I'm kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heroes are artists and writers. ~ Jim Morrison

The art model of problem solving is incredibly efficient because ideology has no place there.There's only the thing and what the thing needs to be. ~ Steven Soderbergh

Your statement ... tells a very fine story; but pray, was not your stock a little heavy a while ago? downward tendency? Sort of low spirits among holders on the subject of that stock?"
"Yes, there was a depression. But how came it? who devised it? The 'bears,' sir. The depression of our stock was solely owing to the growling, the hypocritical growling, of the bears."
"How hypocritical?"
""Why, the most montrous of all hypocrites are these bears: hypocrites by inversion; hypocrites in the simulation of things dark instead of bright; souls that thrive, less upon depression, than the fiction of depression; professors of the wicked art of manufacturing depressions; spurious Jeremiahs; sham Heraclituses, who, the lugubrious day done, return, like sham Lazaruses among the beggars, to make merry over the gains got by their pretended sore heads--scoundrelly bears!"
"You are warm against these bears?"
"If I am, it is less from the remembrance of their stratagems as to our stock, than from the persuasion that these same destroyers of confidence, and gloomy philosophers of the stock-market, though false in themselves, are yet true types of most destroyer of confidence and gloomy philosophers, the world over. Fellows who, whether in stocks, politics, bread-stuffs, morals, metaphysics, religion--be it what it may--trump up their black panics in the naturally-quiet brightness, solely with a view to some sort of covert advantage. That corpse of calamity which t ~ Herman Melville

What is this film (Mirror) about?It is about a Man. No, not the particular man whose voice we hear from behind the screen, played by Innokentiy Smoktunovsky. It's a film about you, your father, your grandfather, about someone who will live after you and who is still "you". About a Man who lives on the earth, is a part of the earth and the earth is a part of him, about the fact that a man is answerable for his life both to the past and to the future. You have to watch this film simply, and listen to the music of Bach and the poems of Arseniy Tarkovsky; watch it as one watches the stars, or the sea, as one admires a landscape. There is no mathematical logic here, for it cannot explain what man is or what is the meaning of his life. (Sculpting in Time) ~ Andrey Tarkovsky

What makes art Christian art? Is it simply Christian artists painting biblical subjects like Jeremiah? Or, by attaching a halo, does that suddenly make something Christian art? Must the artist's subject be religious to be Christian? I don't think so. There is a certain sense in which art is its own justification. If art is good art, if it is true art, if it is beautiful art, then it is bearing witness to the Author of the good, the true, and the beautiful ~ R.C. Sproul

Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence. ~ Georges Braque

Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished; why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory shall fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn. ~ Bahaullah

Sonnet: Political Greatness
Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
History is but the shadow of their shame,
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be,
Must rule the empire of himself; in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed. ~ Josephine Baker

We're able to influence younger generations on design and art. They might not have realized they were an artist. ~ Douglas Wilson

Medicine is magical and magical is art, the boy in the bubble, and the baby with the baboon heart. ~ Paul Simon

Skateboarding is as much, or more, an art of mode of expression than it is a sport. What skateboarding has given me is precisely that: a form of expression that drew me to it, and, in so doing, I was able to express and be who I wanted to be through it, in a sense. ~ Rodney Mullen

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests. ~ Chuck Close