The Art Of Life Quotes

The art of life is to deal with one's problems as they arise; rather than destoy your spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. ~ Robert Harris

There are so many wizards of the computer, stock market, test tube, and spectator sport, but so few of the art of life. ~ Mantak Chia

The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that a man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science has invented the name schizomania for it. Science is in this so far right as no multiplicity maybe dealt with unless there be a series, a certain order and grouping. It is wrong insofar as it holds that one only and binding lifelong order is possible for the multiplicity of subordinate selves. This error of science has many unpleasant consequences, and the single advantage of simplifying the work of the state-appointed pastors and masters and saving them the labors of original thought. In consequence of this error many persons pass for normal, and indeed for highly valuable members of society, who are incurably mad; and many, on the other hand, are looked upon as mad who are geniuses...This is the art of life. You may yourself as an artist develop the game of your life and lend it animation. You may complicate and enrich it as you please. It lies in your hands. Just as madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizomania the beginning of all art and all fantasy. ~ Hermann Hesse

There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age. ~ Oswald Mosley

Whoever chafes at the conditions dealt by fate is unskilled in the art of life; whoever bears with them nobly and makes wise use of the results is a man who deserves to be considered good. ~ Epictetus

Why do we always begin to think about people when they die? I think we should think about people while they're still alive! That way, they can know that we're thinking about them! I always tell people when I'm thinking about them, or that I thought about them, or that I have been thinking about them and it almost always scares them away, but so what, I am practicing the art of life and if that is frightening to them then maybe they need to start living while they're still alive! ~ C. JoyBell C.

What does it mean to be cultured? Who is the cultured person? The cultured individual is not defined nor determined by status in society nor by wealth; but the cultured individual is determined and defined by his or her sense for the art of life. And what is the art of life? The art of life is the reflection of the mind and the soul upon the world, upon other people, upon the respect and understanding of other people and upon the things that are in this world and beyond. There is a joy that is always sought in beautiful things. Being cultured is being conscious, reflective, understanding, feeling, aware. Knowing how to feel, to listen, to understand. A desire to find or to create joy in many things - that is the art of life. And these things define a cultured person. ~ C. JoyBell C.

When it rains it pours. Maybe the art of life is to convert tough times to great experiences: we can choose to hate the rain or dance in it. ~ Joan Marques

Tea ... is a religion of the art of life. ~ Kakuzo Okakura

It cannot be denied that the most successful practitioners of
the art of life, often unknown people by the way, somehow contrive to
synchronize the sixty or seventy different times which beat
simultaneously in every normal human system so that when eleven strikes,
all the rest chime in unison, and the present is neither a violent
disruption nor completely forgotten in the past. Of them we can justly
say that they live precisely the sixty-eight or seventy-two years
allotted them on the tombstone. Of the rest some we know to be dead
though they walk among us; some are not yet born though they go through
the forms of life; others are hundreds of years old though they call
themselves thirty-six. The true length of a person's life, whatever the
"Dictionary of National Biography" may say, is always a matter of
dispute. ~ Virginia Woolf

The art of life is to live in the present moment and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God himself. ~ Emmet Fox

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us ~ Gloria Steinem

She was a shrewd woman, and knew that the art of life is to know when to stop talking. What words have accomplished, too many words can undo. "Good-bye. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message. ~ Chester Elijah Branch

The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something. ~ Henry David Thoreau

As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary; a wild flower by the wayside, tended corn, wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only. ~ John Ruskin

But we must not forget that only a very few people are artists in life; that the art of life is the most distinguished and rarest of all the arts. ~ Carl Jung

The art of life consists in taking each event which befalls us with a contented mind, confident of good ... With this method ... rejoice always, though in the midst of sorrows, and possess all things, though destitute of everything. ~ James Freeman Clarke

Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside our control. Otherwise it would be taking on matters that do not concern it. For as wood is the material of the carpenter, and marble that of the sculptor, so the subject matter of the art of life is the life of the self. ~ Epictetus

Tea with us became more than an idealisation of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. The beverage grew to be an excuse for the worship of purity and refinement, a sacred function at which the host and guest joined to produce for that occasion the utmost beatitude of the mundane. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain - to just be with it all. ~ Ram Dass

An egotism like an eggshell is a thing from which to escape; the art of life is that escape. The fundamental art of life is to recover the sense of that great self-forgetful continuous life from which we have individually budded off. Many people have done this through religion, which begins with a tremendous clamour to some saviour god or other to recognise us and ends in our recognition of him; ~ W.N.P. Barbellion

Magick is the Art of Life itself. ~ Aleister Crowley

Everything happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. - Malcolm Muggeridge1 ~ J. Scott McElroy

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Tea is more than an idealization of the form of drinking; it is a religion of the art of life. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

Again, I am surprised why people seek to eliminate lust and cling to love; as they wish to ignore happiness and cleave unto joy! Now, now, let's not sugar-coat things! Lust has a lot more to do with life and what is the good of life if you do not carry much lust inside of you at all times? And joy is a noble thing, but happiness though fleeting can be found every day and in every small little way! ~ C. JoyBell C.

Cicero smiled at us. 'The art of life is to deal with problems as they arise, rather than destory one's spirit by worrying about them too far in advance. Especially tonight. ~ Robert Harris

The art of life lies in taking pleasures as they pass, and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral. ~ Aristippus

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life. ~ Henry David Thoreau

A master of an art is someone who's been mastered by the art. They've become so one with what they teach that you can't tell the teacher from the student. ~ Frederick Lenz

Art is fueled by rebellion: the need, in some amounting to obsessions, to resist what is, to defy one's elders, even to the point of ostracism; to define oneself, and by extension one's generation, as new, novel, ungovernable. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

There are ... scientific works - star catalogues, for example - which are not art; but the theoretical structures of Gauss, Einstein, or Maxwell are original, individual, "very personal" responses and expressions of exactly the same kind as the creative works of Beethoven or Dostoievski. ~ James R Newman

People were like machines. They broke down. They rattled. They could burn you or maim you if you weren't careful. Her job was not only to figure out why this happened and who was to blame, but also to listen for the signs of it coming. Being sheriff, like being a mechanic, was as much the fine art of preventive maintenance as it was the cleaning up after a breakdown. ~ Hugh Howey

Great art suspends the reverted eye, the lamented past, the anticipated future: we enter with it into the timeless present; we are with God today, perfect in our manner and mode, open to the riches and the glories of a realm that time forgot, but that great art reminds us of: not by its content, but by what it does in us: suspends the desire to be elsewhere. And thus it undoes the agitated grasping in the heart of the suffering self, and releases us - maybe for a second, maybe for a minute, maybe for all eternity - releases us from the coil of ourselves. ~ Ken Wilber

I write about art out of gratitude to painters for the joy and spiritual uplift they have given me. Painters interpret for us the visual glories of God and, in this way, bring us closer to Him. ~ Susan Vreeland

Tortured Soul 101: The depth of despair one experiences during the creative process (as experienced say, in an abysmally blank page or canvas) is directly proportional to the scope and power of the work that emerges when it breaks. ~ F.T. McKinstry

But I'm not fighting as the man he knew today, as a Gold. I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly psychotic women behind me and a fleet of state-of-the-art warships crewed by pissed-off pirates, engineers, techs, and former slaves. And he thinks he knows how to fight me? I laugh as the clawDrill shakes my seat. ~ Pierce Brown

His art is the health of the artist. ~ Harold Clurman

If any have more of the government of thee than Christ, or if thou hadst rather live after any other laws than his, if it were at thy choice, thou art not his disciple (331). ~ Richard Baxter

There is an art to grieving. To grieve well the loss of anyone or anything
a parent, a love, a child, an era, a home, a job
is a creative act. It takes attention and patience and courage. But many of us do not know how to grieve. We were never taught, and we don't see examples of full-bodied grieving around us. Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning
get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of "closure" and move on. ~ Elizabeth Lesser

Art should be appreciated with passion and violence, not with a tepid, depreciating elegance that fears the censoriousness of a common room. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

In a relationship, when does the art of compromise become compromising? ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility. ~ Robert Nozick

Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail. Slight thou art, if I can bear thee, short thou art if I cannot bear thee! ~ Seneca The Younger

Still follow sense, of ev'ry art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole. ~ Alexander Pope

The art of happiness is to serve all, and all shall serve you. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation. ~ Edith Wharton

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer ~ Alfred De Musset

Nature is the mother of all fine art. ~ Biju Karakkonam, Nature And Wildlife Photographer

Surely only boring people went in for conversations consisting of questions and answers. The art of true conversation consisted in the play of minds. ~ Ved Mehta

I think I might have something for you today, he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

The path of Martial Arts begins and ends with courtesy. So be genuinely polite on every occasion. ~ Mas Oyama

The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There was a noise out back and Megan stalked to the end of the hall to look out the window. The door to the shed was just closing.
Finn.
He was just as bad as his brother. Finn had stranded her that morning too and he hadn't said a word to her about Spanish class, even though he never would have passed that pop quiz they had taken without her help. Megan turned and stormed down the hallway. Maybe she was too scared to say anything to Evan, but Finn…she was going to give that boy a piece of her mind.
"You guys all suck, you know that?" Megan shouted, flinging open the door to the shed.
Finn dropped his paintbrush on the leg of his jeans, where it left a streak of orange before hitting the dirty floor.
"Sorry?" he said.
"You! You suck!" Megan fumed.
"We've been over this. I know I suck."
"Not your art. You! You…guys!" Megan shouted.
Finn blinked. "Actually, I think I'm kind of an okay guy."
"Oh, please!" Megan said, squaring off in front of him. "I mean, what's wrong with you people? Were you all born like this? Because it's gotta be in your genes. Either that or you've all gotten each other in one too many choke holds over the years and you've deprived your brains of too much oxygen. Which is it?"
"Megan, I think you need to sit down," Finn said, carefully reaching for her shoulders. Keeping her at arm's length, he steered her over to the old bench and pushed her down until she had to let her knees go and fall into the sea ~ Kate Brian

For, Thou art righteous, O Lord, but we have sinned and committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and Thy hand is grown heavy upon us, and we are justly delivered over unto that ancient sinner, the king of death; because he persuaded our will to be like his will whereby he abode not in Thy truth. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance. ~ Marcel Proust

Women from fashion magazines, they hate other women. They like to tell other women they are ugly and often it works. Women's magazines are mostly about the outside and not about the inside. About make-up instead of arts and literature. Its such a shame. ~ Oliviero Toscani

Sonnet 29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. ~ William Shakespeare

I think one of the worst things schools have done is taken out all of the stuff like art, music, woodworking, sewing, cooking, welding, auto-shop. All these things you can turn into careers. How can you get interested in these careers if you don't try them on a little bit? ~ Temple Grandin

You have brought detection as near an exact science as it ever will be brought in this world. My companion flushed up with pleasure at my words, and the earnest way in which I uttered them. I had already observed that he was as sensitive to flattery on the score of his art as any girl could be of her beauty. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

One of the aims of Budo is the suppression of fears. ~ Christian Tissier

Photography wasn't even considered part of the art world until fairly recently. I find it ironic that some people in the world of fine-art photography consider digital photography as somehow "less artistic," when it is merely a change in process, not vision. The debates will always be there, but your vision is yours alone. ~ Richard Olsenius

"Black culture" is ready for whatever. I sense some momentum and excitement around black artists (especially in comedy, which is where most of my own art resides), really pushing the bounds of what has generally been expected as black. I don't think it's a revolution so much as an exposure of what has always been there, and now that the production and distribution means are more accessible, people can more easily find each other. ~ Baratunde Thurston

Conceptual art became the liberating idea that gave the art of the next 40 years its real impetus. ~ Sol LeWitt

What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can't have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. ~ Anne Lamott

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. ~ Gabor Mate

I dug up some old John Buscema 'Conan' comics. Man, when Alfredo Alcala was inking, that was some of the most beautiful black and white comic art ever published. The stories are good, too, though early '70s comics based on Conan is a festival of sexist, racist stereotypes. ~ Ted Naifeh

Inspiration comes unawares, from unaccountable sources that have nothing to do with planning or intelligence. Let it cool ever so slightly, and you are left, pen or brush in hand, with no inspiration at all. Gifted people need not, therefore, make a song and dance about being or supposing themselves superior. They simply happened to be born with that fortunate, subconscious equipment of theirs, and the mystery exists independently of intelligence or ambition. ~ Maurice Chevalier

Politicians are masters of the art of deception. ~ Martin L. Gross

There were certain young actors I had trained with at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who had always got the big parts and I was always the spear-carrier. Suddenly the roles were reversed and I couldn't understand why, and nor could they. ~ David Warner