Art Of Flattery Quotes

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.
("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Food and sex have been bound together for a long time. I guess this is due to the intimate connection between the two most powerful instincts that predominate in life: the instinct to survive and the instinct to multiply. Nourishment and sex give us a great sense of pleasure. Having the wisdom to satisfy both desires - for food and sex - is the art of living well. I truly believe that this wisdom lies within us all. ~ Ori Hofmekler

The impediment to scientific thinking is not, I think, the difficulty of the subject. Complex intellectual feats have been mainstays even of oppressed cultures. Shamans, magicians and theologians are highly skilled in their intricate and arcane arts. No, the impediment is political and hierarchical. ~ Carl Sagan

He who exercises no forethought but makes light of his opponents is sure to be captured by them. ~ Sun Tzu

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater. ~ Roberta Smith

The work of art expresses precisely those things which do not die. It must do so, however, in a form that bears witness to the artist's own era. ~ Constantin Brancusi

Dare to look up to God and say, Deal with me in the future as Thou wilt; I am of the same mind as Thou art; I am Thine; I refuse nothing that pleases Thee; lead me where Thou wilt; clothe me in any dress Thou choosest. ~ Epictetus

People get inspired to write, paint, draw, sing, sculpt, dance in many different ways. And there are many types of art. But the one thing that they all have in common is that they are all a sort of magic. Sometimes the magic flows from one's fingers, other times it is transferred to the person who experiences the result. Magic has always worked in mysterious ways. ~ Nnedi Okorafor

Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising. ~ Blaise Pascal

He had liked to listen to the exotic (to a Belsey) chatter of business and money and practical politics; to hear that Equality was a myth, and Multiculturalism was a fatuous dream; he thrilled at the suggestion that Art was a gift from God, blessing only a handful of masters, and most Literature merely a veil for poorly reasoned left-wing ideologies. ~ Zadie Smith

When Suzie introduced Helen, she told the audience that one of the best things about books is that they are an interactive art form: that while the author may describe in some detail how a character looks, it is the reader's imagination that completes the image, making it his or her own. "That's why we so often don't like movies made from books, right?" Suzie said. "We don't like someone else's interpretation of what we see so clearly." She talked, too, about how books educate and inspire, and how they soothe the soul-"like comfort food without the calories," she said. She talked about the tactile joys of reading, the feel of a page beneath one's fingers; the elegance of typeface on a page. She talked about how people complain that they don't have time to read, and reminded them that if they gave up half an hour of television a day in favor of reading, they could finish twenty-five books a year. "Books don't take time away from us," she said. "They give it back. In this age of abstraction, of multitasking, of speed for speed's sake, they reintroduce us to the elegance-and the relief!-of real, tick-tock time. ~ Elizabeth Berg

I think newspapers shouldn't try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. ~ Dave Eggers

The precedents for feminine self-expression run back through all the ages since the art of writing was invented ... The era may witness the first female engineer, motor truck chauffeur, radio broadcaster, head of an aviation school, or federal prohibition officer, but it has not produced the first thinking, creative, and writing woman by any means. ~ Mary Ritter Beard

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before. ~ Franz Kafka

If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with the masters. ~ Henry Miller

I believe that a picture, a work of art, lives and dies just as we do ... ~ Marcel Duchamp

Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn't enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate's trade. ~ Richard Dawkins

Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic. ~ Kenneth Clark

The art of clinical diagnosis lies in the ability to ask the right questions. ~ Harriet B. Braiker

The real art of governing consists, so far as possible, in doing nothing. ~ Laozi

The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service to others is the highest duty and glory in human life ... The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. ~ William Graham Sumner

With the Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, this is the Eisenhower-era revisited. It's ostrich time, where people are looking for comfort rather than challenge in their art. It's a lot easier to listen to Barry Manilow murder what are actually good songs from the '50s than to consider what [left-leaning songwriter] Steve Earle has to say. ~ David Fricke

Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works. ~ Wassily Kandinsky

If you want to know what true art is: Go outside on a clear night, wait until it gets very, very dark, then look up! You will see no rules of composition, no evidence of superior technique. Yet, you will be staring into the very face of pure, unadulterated beauty and wonder. That is the unattainable Ideal for which I must constantly strive. ~ Derek R. Audette

Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain. ~ Sun Tzu

The art of hearing what somebody has to say is actually, listening. ~ Colette Ruland Parrino

The irony is that each new war begins in hope: hope of restoring lost honor, hope of redressing injustices and reclaiming tarnished glory, hope of a grand new world. Each war ends with the black seeds of the next war sown: honor newly lost, injustice freshly inflicted, a world more broken than before. Always, someone steps forward, ready to water and weed and harvest those black seeds, dreaming of the day when they will bring forth their bounty of vindictive vindication. Into that dreamer's ear, a bloodred god whispers, "Offer flattery in one hand, fear in the other. Rule or be ruled! Dominate or disappear!"

The rationales warp and shift. The closer war comes, the simpler and stupider the choices. Are you a warrior or a coward? Are you with us or against us?

"All men dream," Colonel Lawrence wrote, "but not equally. Those who dream by night wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ Mary Doria Russell

No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn't pure. And the sun has spots. ~ Gunter Grass

Photography - the supreme form of travel, of tourism - is the principal modern means for enlarging the world. As a branch of art, photography's enterprise of world enlargement tends to specialize in the subjects felt to be challenging, transgressive. A photograph may be telling us: this too exists. And that. And that. (And it is all 'human.') But what are we to do with this knowledge - if indeed it is knowledge, about, say, the self, about abnormality, about ostracized or clandestine worlds? ~ Susan Sontag

Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star. ~ Andy Warhol

Art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them. ~ Jean M. Auel

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy ~ Sun Tzu

You have to make a choice when you start to sing and decide whether you want to service the music, and be at the top of your art, or if you want to be a very popular tenor. ~ Alfredo Kraus

What ever happened to creativity? What ever happened to the passion? What ever happened to speaking ones mind? I'll tell you what happened. The kids aged, but never grew up. A baby can whine if it does not like something because it doesn't know better. What's your excuse? Stop getting offended whenever the wind blows your hair the wrong way! We will get nowhere if we continue to avoid truths to avoid offense. Speak your mind and do not be afraid of stepping on toes. The truth can be ugly, and that's what makes it so beautiful. Speak your mind, but don't take this as a chance to lose respect either. Always keep respect. If someone then still claims to be offended, it is not because of you, nor is it your fault. They simply don't like the taste of the bittersweet truth. ~ Caitlyn Paige

People. Mortals, capable of making mistakes. People always make mistakes. Day in, day out. We are experts in the art of the accident. ~ Jessica Thompson

Are you educated in the art of medicine?" Yeah, the art of Walgreens and Urgent Care. "A bit," I hedged. ~ Lisa T Bergren

Fashion is not art. The aims of fashion and art are different and there is no need to compare them. ~ Rei Kawakubo

We are flooded with books; books come pouring out of the publishing meat grinder. And, the quality has dropped severely. We may be able to print a book better, but intrinsically the book, perhaps, is not better than it was. We have a backlist of books, superb books, by Margaret Wise Brown, by Ruth Krauss, by lots of people. I'd much rather we just took a year off, a moratorium: no more books. For a year, maybe two - just stop publishing. And get those old books back, let the children see them! Books don't go out of fashion with children; they only go out of fashion with adults. So that kids are deprived of the works of art which are no longer around simply because new ones keep coming out.

from The Openhearted Audience (1980) ~ Maurice Sendak

True Artistic Freedom is in Having No Desire Of Rewards ~ Dean Cavanagh