"Study the past if you would define the future."
— Confucius

"In 1913, trying desperately to liberate art from the ballast of the representational world, I sought refuge in the form of the square."
— Kasimir Malevich

"Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen."
— Leonardo da Vinci

"Everything you can imagine is real."
— Pablo Picasso

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
— Pablo Picasso

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
— George Bernard Shaw

"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man
What is in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title,
Romeo, Doth thy name!
And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself....
- (Act II, Scene II)"
— William Shakespeare (Romeo And Juliet)

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival. "
— C.S. Lewis

"A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light."
— Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."
— Pablo Picasso

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
— Pablo Picasso

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
— C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
— Edgar Degas

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
— Groucho Marx

"Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
— Oscar Wilde

"I dream my painting and I paint my dream."
— Vincent Van Gogh

"Creativity takes courage. "
— Henri Matisse

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone"
— Pablo Picasso

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
— Scott Adams

"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams."
— Yann Martel (Self)

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun"
— Pablo Picasso

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."
— William James

"There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."
— Vincent Van Gogh

"All art is quite useless. "
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious."
— Oscar Wilde

"The object of Art is to give life a shape."
— William Shakespeare

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning."
— James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done."
— Vincent Van Gogh

"Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous"
— Toni Morrison (Sula)

"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well."
— Aristotle

"The chief enemy of creativity is good sense."
— Pablo Picasso

"Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted."
— Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
— Albert Camus

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd;
By thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee."
— William Shakespeare

"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
— John Keats

"The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands."
— Leonardo da Vinci

"Art is what you can get away with."
— Andy Warhol

"You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search."
— Rick Riordan

"A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper."
— Ursula K. Le Guin

"It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful."
— Vincent Van Gogh

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. "
— Susan Sontag

""There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

-The Art of Mending"


"
— Elizabeth Berg

"I like my smock. You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock. Actually, I just like to say smock. Smock smock smock smock smock smock."
— Bill Watterson (The Complete Calvin and Hobbes)

"Dying is an art.
Like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call."
— Sylvia Plath

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; —
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; —
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; —
'Tis the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door —
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore.""
— Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)

"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day."
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind)

"To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is."
— David McCullough

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can."
— Danny Kaye

"The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov