Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Art
No work of art is worth the bones of a Pomeranian Grenadier.
Quoted by Bismarck. Possibly a phrase of Frederick the Great.
Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature is the art of God.
Sir Thomas Browne—Religio Medici. Sec. 16.
It is the glory and good of Art,
That Art remains the one way possible
Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine at least.
Robert Browning—The Ring and the Book. The Book and the Ring. L. 842.
Etenim omnes artes, quæ ad humanitatem pertinent, habent quoddam commune vinculum, et quasi cognatione quadam inter se continentur.
All the arts which belong to polished life have some common tie, and are connected as it were by some relationship.
Cicero—Oratio Pro Licinio Archia. I.
L’arte vostra quella, quanto puote,
Seque, come il maestro fa il discente;
Si che vostr’arte a Dio quasi è nipote.
Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God’s grandchild.
Dante—Inferno. XI. 103.
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character. Ch. XI.
All passes, Art alone
Enduring stays to us;
The Bust out-lasts the throne,—
The coin, Tiberius.
Austin Dobson—Ars Victrix. (Imitated from Théophile Gautier.)
The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art.
Emerson—Society and Solitude. Art.
L’Art supreme
Seule a l’eternité
Et le buste
Survit la cité.
High art alone is eternal and the bust outlives the city.
Théophile Gautier—L’Art.
As all Nature’s thousand changes
But one changeless God proclaim;
So in Art’s wide kingdom ranges
One sole meaning still the same:
This is Truth, eternal Reason,
Which from Beauty takes its dress,
And serene through time and season
Stands for aye in loveliness.
Goethe—Wilhelm Meister’s Travels. Ch. XIV. (Ch. III. 128 of Carlyle’s Ed.)
His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand;
His manners were gentle, complying, and bland;
Still born to improve us in every part,
His pencil our faces, his manners our heart.
Goldsmith—Retaliation. L. 139.
The canvas glow’d beyond ev’n nature warm;
The pregnant quarry teem’d with human form.
Goldsmith—The Traveller. L. 137.
The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result.
John Mason Good—The Book of Nature. Series 1. Lecture LX.
Ars longa, vita brevis est.
Art [of healing] is long, but life is fleeting.
Hippocrates—Aphorismi. I. Nobilissimus Medicus. Translated from the Greek. Goethe—Wilhelm Meister. VII. 9.
The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple’s uses.
J. G. Holland—Plain Talks on Familiar Subjects. Art and Life.
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise.
’Tis more by art, than force of numerous strokes.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. 23. L. 382. Pope’s trans.
Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit æqua potestas.
Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.
Horace—Ars Poetica. 9.
Piety in art—poetry in art—Puseyism in art—let us be careful how we confound them.
Mrs. Jameson—Memoirs and Essays. The House of Titian.
Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
Ben Jonson—Every Man Out of his Humour. Act I. Sc. 1.
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg.
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart,
But the devil whoops, as he whooped of old; It’s clever, but is it art?
Rudyard Kipling—The Conundrum of the Workshops.
Art is Power.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. III. Ch. V.
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in art.
Longfellow—Keramos. L. 380.
Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child in whom we trace
The features of the mother’s face,
Her aspect and her attitude.
Longfellow—Keramos. L. 382.
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
Longfellow—Nuremburg. St. 13.
For Art is Nature made by Man
To Man the interpreter of God.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—The Artist. St. 26.
The heart desires,
The hand refrains,
The Godhead fires,
The soul attains.
William Morris. Inscribed on the four pictures of Pygmalion and Galatea by Burne-Jones, in the Grosvenor Gallery, London.
Arte citæ veloque rates remoque moventur;
Arte levis currus, arte regendus Amor.
By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the light chariot, and establish love.
Ovid—Ars Amatoria. I. 3.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Quintilian.
Die Kunst ist zwar nicht das Brod, aber der Wein des Lebens.
Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.
Jean Paul Richter.
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
Ruskin—The Seven Lamps of Architecture. Ch. IV. Pt. XXX. The Lamp of Beauty.
Seraphs share with thee
Knowledge; But Art, O Man, is thine alone!
Schiller—
The Artists. St. 2.
Von der Freiheit gesäugt wachsen die Künste der Lust.
All the arts of pleasure grow when suckled by freedom.
Schiller—Der Spaziergang. L. 122.
Kunst ist die rechte Hand der Natur. Diese hat nur Geschöpfe, jene hat Menschen gemacht.
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.
Schiller—Fiesco. II. 17.
Schwer ist die Kunst, vergänglich ist ihr Preis.
Art is difficult, transient is her reward.
Schiller—Wallenstein. Prolog. L. 40.
Illa maximi medicorum exclamatio est, Vitam brevem esse, longam artem.
That is the utterance of the greatest of physicians, that life is short and art long.
Seneca—De Brevitate Vitæ. I.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow.
King John. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 11.
In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed,
To make some good, but others to exceed.
Pericles. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 15.
His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed.
Venus and Adonis. L. 291.
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
Francis Wayland—The Iliad and the Bible.
Around the mighty master came
The marvels which his pencil wrought,
Those miracles of power whose fame
Is wide as human thought.
Whittier—Raphael. St. 8.