Quotes about Art

What is originality in art? Perhaps it is easier to define what it is not and this may be done by saying that it is never a willful rejection of what has been accepted as the necessary laws of various forms of art. Thus in reasoning originality relies not in discarding the necessary laws of thought, but in using them to express new intellectual conceptions. In poetry originality consists not in discarding the necessary laws of rhythm but in finding new rhythms within the limits of those laws.

The state of civil society, which necessarily generates this aristocracy, is a state of nature; and much more truly so than a savage and incoherent mode of life. For man is by nature reasonable; and he is never perfectly in his natural state, but when he is placed where reason may be best cultivated, and most predominates. Art is man's nature. We are as much, at least, in a state of nature in formed manhood, as in immature and helpless infancy.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

The more the marbles wastes, the more the statue grows.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Poems, novels - these things belong to the nation, to the culture, and the people.

Anyone who holds a pen these days thinks he or she is a poet.

Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

I like - I actually love classical music very much.