Dutch Art Quotes

There is a love for the real, an affection for the true, in all of Dutch art. A church interior with its stillness. A hand with its gesture. A landscape with its distances. A cloud with its motion. ~ Katharine Weber

I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this - But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don't really resent it. ~ Vita Sackville-West

One thing that struck me early is that you don't put into a photograph what's going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in. ~ Diane Arbus

To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant ~ Taisen Deshimaru

If you ask today what art is, what its function is, what the meaning of art is and why one should create art, the answer given oftentimes by Western philosophers of art and those who special- ize in modern aesthetics is 'art for art's sake.' The modern response is that you just create art for the sake of art; but this was never the answer of traditional civilizations where one created art for both the sake of attainment of inner perfection and for human need in the deepest sense - because the needs of man are not only physical, they are also spiritual. We are as much in need of beauty as of the air that we breathe. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Over the years, I have been subjected to many indignities, all for the sake of Art. If I ever catch him, I'm going to kill the guy. ~ Bob Hope

If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt ~ George Bernard Shaw

I'm not saying people should not be held accountable for their hurtful behavior. But the only thing blaming does is to keep the focus off you. It means you aren't dealing with your problems. ~ Art E. Berg

My wife Patrice, in addition to being enormously supportive, has taught me a lot about life. She might argue it's because I have so much to learn. One of the most important things I've learned is the art of listening. ~ James Comey

Don't let society's labels
hold you back. If you have a
true passion for something
whether its sports, art,
science, etc ... don't believe
anyone who says you can't do
it because you're a girl. If you
want to play baseball, hockey,
or football, don't let anyone
tell you that you can't. If you
want to play with Hot Wheel
cars and Legos, then do it.
Only you are the boss of you ~ Alison G. Bailey

You've got to invest in the world, you've got to read, you've got to go to art galleries, you've got to find out the names of plants. You've got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We're amazing people. ~ Vivienne Westwood

The love of all-inclusiveness is as dangerous in philosophy as in art. ~ George Santayana

Art might be beautiful even though the artist is not. ~ Debasish Mridha

It fits to glorify God - it not only fits reality, because God is infinitely and supremely praiseworthy, but it fits us as nothing else does. All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places - and all the love we have looked for in the arms of other people - is only fully present in God himself. And so in every action by which we treat him as glorious as he is, whether through prayer, singing, trusting, obeying, or hoping, we are at once giving God his due and fulfilling our own design. ~ Timothy Keller

Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory. ~ Theophile Gautier

If a new movement in art comes along be awake to it, study it, but don't belong to it. Have a personal humor about things. You will never know your calibre until you have tried yourself. Avoid idle industry. Always leave out the padding. Be venturesome. Try new things that appeal to you. Examine others. Have a pioneer spirit. Prevent your drawing from being common. Put life into it. The way to do this is to see the model, see that the model is great, wonderful - a human creature there before you in the tragedy and comedy of life - then draw. ~ Robert Henri

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. ~ Leland Ryken

Film, television, and working with a camera is such an intimate art form that if a camera is right on you, and I've got your face filling the screen, you have to be real. If you do anything that is fake, you're not going to get away with it, because the camera is right there, and the story is being told in a very real way. ~ Paul Feig

The biggest mistake that parents make, is believing that their assigned task in life is to teach their children and to guide them in every situation of their children's lives. The truth is that it is the task of parents to both learn from their children and to guide them as well. Parenting is a relationship that goes both ways, from the moment your child is born, you learn from that person, and in fact, your lessons begin long before your child's lessons do. Later on, when you've learned a great deal already, then they begin to learn from you. Throughout our lives, it is a give-and-take relationship, in many ways. Our assigned task is to learn from our children, and to guide and teach them. Their assigned task is to learn from us, and also to teach us. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Drawing is the true test of art. ~ Horace

The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art. ~ Sir Archibald Alison, 2nd Baronet

I liked the way the Jewish religion seemed, on the whole, to have devoted so much energy and art to finding loopholes in its crazy laws; I like what this seemed to me to imply about its attitude toward God, that dictatorial and arbitrary old fuck with his curses and his fiats and his yen for the smell of burnt shoulder meat. ~ Michael Chabon

A really spiritual person will live life as an art, will create a deep harmony between the body and the consciousness. And this is the greatest art there is. His life will be a joy to see. And he will be fragrant, for the sheer reason that there is no split in his being. The very unity makes him organic; the wound of division is healed. ~ Rajneesh

One of the pleasures of art is that it enables the mind to move in unanticipated directions, to make connections that may be in some sense errors but are fruitful nonetheless. ~ Donald Barthelme

If you feel trapped in a situation and are complaining about it, figure out how to untrap yourself and stop complaining. Save your energy for further figuring out and when there is an increase in courage. ~ Art Hochberg

I think I would go further into fine arts, I think, if I were to continue. ~ Joni Mitchell

Not your weapons," Agrona sneered. "Your artifacts. Sigyn's bow. The Horn of Roland. The Swords of Ruslan. And, of course, Vic."
"Well, naturally," the sword crowed, his voice swelling with pride. "I do put the art in artefact."
I looked down on him. "Really?" I whispered. "You're really going to talk about how awesome you are at a time like this?"
"Certainly," Vic said. "Why wouldn't I? ~ Jennifer Estep

It was not Monsieur Arouet, but a colleague of his - a lady novelist - who remarked to me once that writing novels was a cannibal's art, in which one often mixed small portions of one's friends and one's enemies together, seasoned them with imagination, and allowed the whole to stew together into a savory concoction. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Maybe now if you're not an exhibitionist you're private. Or maybe it's just that for a lot of people - sometimes in interesting ways, sometimes in stupid ways - there's no division between the art object and what surrounds it. ~ Ben Lerner

I think what's important for myself and anyone else who wants to create a film, or art, is [to] make sure that they have something to say, that they want to share something important, express something important. ~ Tom Ford

Without honesty, art is dead. ~ Jon Foreman

I tried to do it all myself: be mommy and camp counselor and art teacher and prereading specialist (and somehow, in my off-hours, to do my own work). I tried my absolute best. And like so many of the moms around me, I started to go a little crazy. ~ Judith Warner

Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, "What do you see in this work?" The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just as much when applied to Scripture. ~ Dale B. Martin

O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee. ~ Laurence Sterne

Art is the refreshing source of existence. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation ofthe necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A clever general ... avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods. Disciplined and calm, he awaits the appearance of disorder and hubbub among the enemy. This is the art of retaining self-possession. ~ Sun Tzu