Arts Quotes

Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. ~ Andre Bazin

The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. ~ Hendrik Willem Van Loon

Never write about martial arts..
if you've never been in a real fight. ~ Toba Beta

A good artist has less time than ideas. ~ Martin Kippenberger

Do not be afraid to get close to your opponent. The closer you are, the more you will learn. ~ Manuel Dos Reis Machado

I don't believe in the art-for-art's-sake philosophy. With the raw material before me and the gifts within me, I did my best to celebrate the voices and intelligence and sweetness and dreams of the children in spite of their chaotic, outer worlds ... ~ Uwem Akpan

When we introduce new technologies into our classrooms we are teaching our students twice. ~ Michael Joseph Brown

Beauty can break a heart and make it think about something more spiritual than the mindless routine we go through day after day to get by. Francis was a singer, a poet, an actor. He knew that the imagination was a stealth way into people's souls, a way to get all of us to think about God. For him, beauty was its own apologetic. That's why a church should care about the arts. They inspire all of us to think about the eternal. ~ Ian Morgan Cron

For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it. ~ Hippocrates

Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws. ~ Leon Trotsky

You've been looking like this for months." Leo does something strange with his face.
"I don't look like that."
"Yeah. You do."
"I'll look like that if Daisy dumps me, and she'll dump me if she thinks I lied," Dylan says.
"You threw eggs at her head. Odds are she's dumping you anyway." I turn to Leo. "We decided. We said that we weren't telling anyone. We said it was art for art's sake. We said the more people knew, the more chance the cop's pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew."
"Are you sure I didn't say it was to score girls? ~ Cath Crowley

Peter's not cocky. Peter's a nerd, ' Drew says.
'I know! Where does he get off being nerdy and full of himself? It's like he lives in some kind of alterna-world where nerds are cool.'
'He does,' Drew says smiling wide. 'It's called arts school. ~ Rachel M. Wilson

Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out. ~ Harold Rosenberg

I've been training with my mixed martial arts guy as much as I can when I'm back in L.A., so if I could do another movie like I did in 'The Killing Game,' with Samuel L. Jackson, that would be awesome. ~ Kellan Lutz

I studied dance at a high school arts magnet program before moving on to Miami's New World School of the Arts, and from there, I went on to study at The Juilliard School. ~ Robert Battle

The art of manipulating public opinion, which is a necessary art for the democratic politician, and, like other arts, is sometimespractised with greater virtuosity by knaves than by honest men (who are apt to disdain it), has a different technique in different countries. For instance, in England we excel in whitewashing: in America they excel in tarring and feathering. We strain our nerves and stretch our consciences to avoid a scandal: Americans do the same to make one. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I did go to a performing arts school, so that facilitated my creativity, though I ended up going in a more musical direction. ~ Alycia Debnam Carey

Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to unity, harmony, serenity - an end to his alienation from nature. All these arts of remote times or strange cultures either give or suggest to the modern artist forms which he can adapt to his needs, the elements of a new iconography. ~ Herbert Read

I know there are some labels that put out music for art's sake, but I don't know which ones. ~ Josh Homme

Whatever is going on inside your head has everything to do with how well you end up performing. ~ D.C. Gonzalez

The modern scene in decoration is not a unified or controlled one. The unified control of the arts during the reign of Louis XIV no longer exists; today the designer is free to achieve a wider variety and more personal approach to the interior. ~ Van Day Truex

Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality. ~ Walter Legge

I need a weapon," Valkyrie muttered.
"You're an Elemental with a Necromancer ring, trained in
a variety of martial arts by some of the best fighters in the world," Skulduggery pointed out. "I'm fairly certain that makes you a weapon."
"I mean a weapon you hold. You have a gun, Tanith has a sword ... I want a stick."
"I'll buy you a stick for Christmas. ~ Derek Landy

The best martial artist doesn't win fights, but avoids fights. Martial arts is a way of gaining basic self-mastery of your mind, body and emotions. It can also be very useful in combat situations. ~ Frederick Lenz

As far as stimulus from the visual arts specifically, there is today in most of us a visual appetite that is hungry, that is acutely undernourished. One might go so far as to say that Protestants in particular suffer from a form of visual anorexia. It is not that there is a lack of visual stimuli, but rather a lack of wholesomeness of form and content amidst the all-pervasive sensory overload. ~ John Walford

We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. But we have only to tap its glossy veneer for it to split wide open, and reveal to us its roots and foundations, its old dark heart of metaphysics, mysticism, magic, and myth. Medicine is the oldest of the arts, and the oldest of the sciences: would one not expect it to spring from the deepest knowledge and feelings we have? ~ Oliver Sacks

Men of the highest education in the arts and sciences have learned precious lessons from Christians in humble life who were designated by the world as unlearned. But these obscure disciples had obtained an education in the highest of all schools. They had sat at the feet of Him who spoke as "never man spake." [252] ~ Ellen G. White

Only through training will a person learn his own weaknesses ... He who is aware of his weaknesses will remain master of himself in any situation. ~ Gichin Funakoshi

I went to a private school in Singapore and they had an incredible arts program. Every day I was doing something artistic. ~ Lynn Collins

When I graduated from high school, I had artistic and academic scholarships, and I was trying to figure out what to do. I decided to audition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Juilliard and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts in Sydney, Australia. ~ Deborah Kara Unger

The modern architect is, generally speaking, art's greatest enemy. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I know that one of the distinguishing things was I looked like I could hold a gun, even though I'd never held one before and I'm physically able to do the martial arts and all that stuff. ~ Yvonne Strahovski

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can using only their hands and feet make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. ~ Dave Barry

We in the Black Arts movement, which wasn't really a movement but a group of people who had similar objectives ... ~ Nikki Giovanni

The only time we fail is when we stop trying. ~ Chuck Norris

I would like people to appreciate science in the same way they appreciate the arts. ~ Richard Dawkins

Harry, despite your privileged insight into Voldemort's world (which, incidentally, is a gift any Death Eater would kill to have), you have never been seduced by the Dark Arts, never, even for a second, shown the slightest desire to become one of Voldemort's followers!"
"Of course I haven't!" said Harry indignantly. "He killed my mum and dad!"
"You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!" said Dumbledore loudly. ~ J.K. Rowling

The willful amnesia afflicting the sciences in general contrasts sharply with the importance given to memory by the humanities. Literature, philosophy, politics, and the visual arts, including photography and filmmaking, feed on memory. Practitioners of the humanities need memory to deepen and refine their thinking. ~ James Hillman

Luck is a component that a lot of people in the arts sometimes fail to recognise: that you can have talent, perseverance, patience, but without luck you will not have a successful career. ~ Bryan Cranston

The warrior learns of the spiritual realm by dwelling on the cutting edge of the sword, standing at the edge of the fire pit, venturing right up to the edge of starvation if necessary. Vibrant and intense living is the warrior's form of worship. ~ Stephen K. Hayes

Many, Lorenzo, have held and still hold the opinion, that there is nothing which has less in common with another, and that is so dissimilar, as civilian life is from the military. Whence it is often observed, if anyone designs to avail himself of an enlistment in the army, that he soon changes, not only his clothes, but also his customs, his habits, his voice, and in the presence of any civilian custom, he goes to pieces; for I do not believe that any man can dress in civilian clothes who wants to be quick and ready for any violence; nor can that man have civilian customs and habits, who judges those customs to be effeminate and those habits not conducive to his actions; nor does it seem right to him to maintain his ordinary appearance and voice who, with his beard and cursing, wants to make other men afraid: which makes such an opinion in these times to be very true. But if they should consider the ancient institutions, they would not find matter more united, more in conformity, and which, of necessity, should be like to each other as much as these (civilian and military); for in all the arts that are established in a society for the sake of the common good of men, all those institutions created to (make people) live in fear of the laws and of God would be in vain, if their defense had not been provided for and which, if well arranged, will maintain not only these, but also those that are not well established. And so (on the contrary), good institutions without the help of t ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say, "I know what Zen is," or "I have attained enlightenment." This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner."
-
"When you are sitting in the middle of your own problem, which is more real to you: your problem or you yourself? The awareness that you are here, right now, is the ultimate fact. "
-
"Knowing that your life is short, to enjoy it day after day, moment after moment, is the life of "form is form and emptiness is emptiness."
-
"You may feel as if you are doing something special, but actually it is only the expression of your true nature; it is the activity which appeases your inmost desire. But as long as you think you are practicing zazen for the sake of something, that is not true practice."
-
"The most important thing is to forget all gaining ideas, all dualistic ideas. In other words, just practice zazen in a certain posture. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Fighting is an expression. It's a form of speech, and that's why they call it martial arts. It's an art. ~ Chael Sonnen

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,
we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I have a doctorate in fine arts from Knox College in Illinois. All I did was give a speech, and now everybody has to call me Dr. Colbert. ~ Stephen Colbert

Architecture would lead us to all the arts, as it did with earlier mean: but if we despise it and take no note of how we are housed, the other arts will have a hard time of it indeed. ~ William Morris

The principle of martial arts is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires. ~ Bruce Lee

My mentality is that when I go to sleep at night, I'm a better martial artist than when I woke up in the morning. ~ Georges St-Pierre

To say that secular means irreligious implies that all the arts and sciences are irreligious, and is very like saying that all professions except that of the law are illegal. ~ John Stuart Mill

Depression is a real demon in the woods for a lot of creative people, you know? It's part of what the documentary is trying to be about for me, finding balance, where the beauty that is attainable in the creative arts can be matched with the scratchy roughness of regular life. ~ Ethan Hawke

The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling. ~ Susanne Katherina Langer

For most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war than to the useful arts of peace; and in these I neither have any knowledge, nor do I much desire it; they are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms, right or wrong, than on governing well those they possess: ~ Thomas More

In all technai or arts (medicine perhaps most of all), there is a self-exhilaration on the part of the practitioner (the intoxication of the ego with its own potency) which is infectious: the patient enjoys a placebo-effect which redounds to the ego of the "artist." ~ Kenny Smith

Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows ~ Henry David Thoreau

Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment, but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much greater Tendency to the Refinement of human Nature; I must confess I would allow it no better Quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his Common-wealth. ~ Joseph Addison

I don't think there should be a hierarchy of what is valid in the arts. ~ Seth Numrich

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself. ~ Chris Matakas

From my opinion, 'geisha' means a woman skilled in the arts, like dancing, singing and playing musical instruments,. ~ Zhang Ziyi

We writers spent the entire twentieth century tearing down the bourgeoisie! ... We in the arts have been complicit in the denigration of the best people on earth. Why? Because so many of the most influential ideas of our time are the product of a new creature of the twentieth century, a creature that did not exist until 1898 - and that creature is known as 'the intellectual. ~ Tom Wolfe

Those who rush are the same ones who lack technique. ~ Ryron Gracie

Anyway, when I was a kid, I dutifully went to the Sydney Technical and Fine Arts College. ~ Rod Taylor

My health has benefited the most from practising Wing Chun. ~ Ip Chun

Cash was running low, so I'd applied for a job as an administrative assistant for a nonprofit arts group. Without question, my organizational skills were as sharp as my vision, and I had no office experience to speak of. Luckily for me, none of this surfaced during the interview.

'Ryan, pretend it's a rough morning for a sec. Handle this situation for me. When you arrive at work to open the arts resource centre, several people are already at the door. Two clients want immediate help with grant applications - you know those artists, they just can't wait! - and a third wants to use our library, which isn't open till noon. Entering the office, you hear the phone is ringing and see the message light is blinking. The fax machine looks jammed again, and we're expecting an important document. Among the people waiting is a courier with a package you need to sign for. Think about it, though. The lights haven't been turned on yet, and the sign put out front. The alarm needs the code within a minute, too. So, wow, rough morning. I'd like to know what you'd do first.'

'First I'd tell everybody how weird this is. I'm in the same test situation from my job interview. What are the chances?'

I started the next day. ~ Ryan Knighton

After I received my blue belt, I soon recognized that the belts were simply an external representation of an inner experience, and that they mattered little compared to the person I was becoming. ~ Chris Matakas

I have written a lot about the fine arts, but I'd never written about the literary arts, and so on some level Dante really, you know, spoke to me, as new ground but also familiar ground. ~ Dan Brown

And e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks if this be joy. ~ Oliver Goldsmith

It's not what you're going to take from martial arts, it's what you have to give to martial arts ~ Saulo Ribeiro

Practical utility, however, is not the ultimate purpose of a liberal arts education. Its ultimate purpose is to help you learn to reflect in the widest and deepest sense, beyond the requirements of work and career: for the sake of citizenship, for the sake of living well with others, above all, for the sake of building a self that is strong and creative and free. ~ William Deresiewicz

There's a tradition in British intellectual life of mocking any non-political force that gets involved in politics, especially within the sphere of the arts and the theatre. ~ Harold Pinter

Your technique means nothing if you're not using your talents for the betterment of humanity. ~ Gene Dunn

The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals. ~ Jonathan Lethem

There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts. ~ Walter Savage Landor

The expansionary dynamic of Western culture has been the root, the denominating constant, of modern history. The grandeur of Western liberalism, its material abundance, the flourishing of its arts and sciences, its painful construction of constitutional democracy -- these interconnected achievements have been financed by the sustained theft called imperialism. ~ Carl Oglesby

I'm convinced that the arts could be something of a higher power. ~ Veronika Carnaby

If you don't exist in the arts of a culture, you're invisible. The arts are what express the soul of who we are and that expresses our humanity. ~ Esmeralda Santiago

I have a Bachelor of Arts in English, which means I had a lot of formal training in reading. ~ Kate DiCamillo

One association with the arts that I vividly remember was a magazine called Normal Instructor, a teachers' magazine, that Miss George would hold up with illustrations of great artworks like [Vincent] van Gogh and Rembrandt [van Rijn]. ~ Paul Smith

Take what's useful, discard what is not. ~ Bruce Lee

Rome was not the first state of organized gangsterdom, nor was it the last; but it was the only one that managed to bamboozle posterity into an almost universal admiration. Few rational men admire the Huns, the Nazis or the Soviets; but for centuries, schoolboys have been expected to read Julius Caesar's militaristic drivel ("We inflicted heavy losses upon the enemy, our own casualties being very light") and Cato's revolting incitements to war. They have been led to believe that the Romans had attained an advanced level in the sciences, the arts, law, architecture, engineering and everything else. It is my opinion that the alleged Roman achievements are largely a myth; and I feel it is time for this myth to be debunked a little. What the Romans excelled in was bullying, bludgeoning, butchering and blood baths. Like the Soviet Empire, the Roman Empire enslaved peoples whose cultural level was far above their own. They not only ruthlessly vandalized their countries, but they also looted them, stealing their art treasures, abducting their scientists and copying their technical know-how, which the Romans' barren society was rarely able to improve on. No wonder, then, that Rome was filled with great works of art. But the light of culture which Rome is supposed to have emanated was a borrowed light: borrowed from the Greeks and the other peoples that the Roman militarists had enslaved. ~ Petr Beckmann

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Creativity runs across many categories in life, from the arts-and-crafts project a mum or dad does with their kids, to the bestselling author's manuscript, to the designs of the hairdresser, to the creations of the computer programming genius. ~ Tabatha Coffey

Making reality real is art's responsibility. It is a practical assignment, then, a self-assignment: to achieve, by a cultivated sensitivity for observing life, a capacity for receiving impressions, a lonely, unremitting, unaided, unaidable vision, and transferring this vision without distortion to it onto the pages of a novel, where, if the reader is so persuaded, it will turn into the reader's illusion. ~ Eudora Welty

We all must support the arts, as it is our culture. It makes us better people. It makes us happy; it gives us empathy and shows us how to live. It is so important. ~ Imelda Staunton

All civilization in a sense exists only in the mind. Gunpowder, textile arts, machinery, laws, telephones are not themselves transmitted from man to man or from generation to generation, at least not permanently. It is the perception, the knowledge and understanding of them, their ideas in the Platonic sense, that are passed along. Everything social can have existence only through mentality. ~ Alfred L. Kroeber

While I enjoy teaching people on the basic and intermediate levels to work them up to advanced levels, my real talent is for the advanced students. You could say that I'm like a ninth-degree black belt in martial arts. ~ Frederick Lenz

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to go to Oberlin and wanted the liberal arts. Obviously I really get intense pleasure out of drawing connections between pieces and poems and literature and ideas. ~ Jeremy Denk

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank. ~ Immanuel Kant

In the visual arts, for example, the semiological approach to graphics provides a rigorous analysis of the visual means used by the artist. It defines the basic properties and laws governing the arts and suggests objective criteria for art criticism. ~ Jacques Bertin

Justice is rendering each killer that which is his due. ~ Mark M. DeRobertis

I'm a liberal arts junkie. ~ Mary Chapin Carpenter

The usefulness of the cup is its emptiness. ~ Bruce Lee

I took myself out of the business to study film at NYU and the School of Visual Arts. I grew up on movie sets and was fascinated with the camera and behind-the-scenes work. I felt it would help my career as an actor if I knew all aspects of film. ~ Devin Ratray

'The New Yorker's' drama critics have always had a comparable authority because, for the most part, the magazine made it a practice to employ critics who moonlighted in the arts. They worked both sides of the street, so to speak. ~ John Lahr

If all meanings could be adequately expressed by words, the arts of painting and music would not exist. ~ John Dewey

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us. ~ Henri Matisse

In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Till tree from tree, tree among trees tree over tree become stone to stone, stone between stones, stone under stone for ever.
O Loud, hear the wee beseech of thees of each of these thy unlitten ones! Grant sleep in hour's time, O Loud!
That they take no chill. That they do ming no merder. That they shall not gomeet madhowiatrees.
Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughter low! ~ James Joyce

No performance is worth loss of geniality. 'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy goods called fine arts and philosophy. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having a thirteen-year-old in the family is like having a general-admission ticket to the movies, radio and TV. You get to understand that the glittering new arts of our civilization are directed to the teen-agers, and by their suffrage they stand or fall. ~ Max Lerner

It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels. ~ Fukuzawa Yukichi