 |
| Define Beauty |
There’s something the technicians need to learn from the artists. If it isn’t aesthetically pleasing, it’s probably wrong. Julius Fenton
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. Albert Camus
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. Andre Gide
Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds. Barnet Newman
The artist is a cut above the critic, for the artist is writing something which will move the critic. The critic is writing something which will move everybody but the artist. William Faulkner
Take the advice of light when you’re looking at linens or jewels; looking at faces or forms, take the advice of the day. Ovid
In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Susan Sontag
A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment. George Eliot
And any stone… being mentally handled must become endowed with such poetry and artistry as God has given you. Gavin Stamp
A fine thought, to become poetry, must be seasoned in the upper warm garrets of the mind for long and long, then it must be brought down and slowly carved into words, shaped with emotion, polished with love. David Grayson
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable. W H. Auden
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful. Emerson
When a man says he sees nothing in a book, he very often means that he does not see himself in it; which, if it is not a comedy or a satire, is likely enough. Julius Charles Hare and Augustus William Hare
The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. George Eliot
Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without the vices. Lord Byron, epitaph on his dog’s tomb
What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you; that impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can’t get enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit till at last your eyes are closed. Robertson Davies
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him. Dylan Thomas
Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. T. S. Eliot
New music: new listening. Not an attempt to understand something that is being said, for, if something were being said, the sounds would be given the shapes of words. Just an attention to the activity of sounds. John Cage
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. Bertrand Russell
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present. Shelley
Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself. Goethe
We’re constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run, it’s not going to do anything for you. Bob Dylan
Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light. John Ruskin
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. John Keats
The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision. Washington Irving
When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed its point. Maria Callas
The eye is the painter and the ear the singer. Emerson
You cannot have good architecture merely by asking people’s advice on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. John Ruskin
Spend all you have for loveliness, buy it and never count the cost; for one white singing hour of peace count many a year of strife well lost, and for a breath of ecstasy give all you have been, or could be. Sara Teasdale
We every day and every hour say things of another that we might more properly say of ourselves, could we but apply our observations to our own concerns. Montaigne
Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has on us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that. Thomas Carlyle
