#s

An artist is the magician put among men to gratify--capriciously--their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships--and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes--husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer... ↗

— Tom Stoppard

#history #literature #art

No...he lives to create art, but he loves to murder. ↗

— Mo'Dayvia La'Beija

#mark #mask #murder #red #art

What is certain is this, that I never rested in that way again, my feet obscenely resting on the earth, my arms on the handlebars and on my arms my head, rocking and abandoned. It is indeed a delporable sight, a deplorable example, for the people, who so need to be encouraged, in their bitter toil, and to have before their eyes manifestations of strength only, of courage and joy, without which they might collapse, at the end of the day, and roll on the ground. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#example #identifying-with-others #people #separation #courage

The artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#artists #writers #writing #art

Science is an organized pursuit of triviality. Art is a casual pursuit of significance. Let's keep it in perspective. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#perspective #pursuit #science #significance #trivia

When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu. ↗

— W.H. Auden

#conventionality #taste #art

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#expression #portrait #serious #art

Since art is considered a noble field, art should be used to promote all that is good and noble, and in a noble fashion. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#arts #arts-and-humanities #artsy #creative #creativity

To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can't learn at the foot of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you've been knocked down. ↗

— Joe Biden

#art

The desire of intimacy is the desire to share one's innermost self with another ↗

— Dan McAdams

#art