"These people have learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting, the very trees, and wild herbs."
— Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

"People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water."
— Akira Kurosawa (Something Like An Autobiography)

"Creativity takes courage. "
— Henri Matisse

"If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes. "
— Pablo Picasso

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
— Mark Twain

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance."
— Aristotle

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. "
— Pablo Picasso (Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form : Graphic Works, 1895-1972)

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
— Mark Twain (The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain: A Book of Quotations)

"Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO
DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see."
— James Joyce (Ulysses)

"The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written."
— Italo Calvino

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent"
— Victor Hugo

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you--whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others--not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art."
— Dorianne Laux (The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry)

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— Haruki Murakami

"The Reality of The Other Person Lies Not In What He Reveals To You, But What He Cannot Reveal To You.
Therefore, If You Would Understand Him, Listen Not To What He Says, But Rather To What He Does Not Say.
"
— Khalil Gibran

"I
Know a sad little mermaid
Dwelling in the ocean
Softly, gently blowing
Her heart into a wooden flute
A sad little mermaid
Who dies with a kiss at night
And is born again with another kiss at dawn "
— Forugh Furrokhzad

"Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create."
— Maria Montessori

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life. "
— Federico Fellini

"The eyes only see what the mind is prepared to comprehend. "
— Henri Bergson

"Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well...."
— René Magritte

""Colour is a power which directly influences the soul."
"
— Wassily Kandinsky

"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

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
— Aristotle

"" Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future." "
— Albert Camus