Famous Quotes & Sayings

Edward Gibbon

In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.

Edward Gibbon

The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.

Edward Gibbon

Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures; since the productions of nature are the materials of art. Under the Roman empire, the labour of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly employed, in the service of the rich. In their dress, their table, their houses, and their furniture, the favourites of fortune united every refinement of conveniency, of elegance, and of splendour, whatever could soothe their pride or gratify their sensuality.

Edward Gibbon

There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard to economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life.

Edward Gibbon

The nations, and the sects, of the Roman world, admitted with equal credulity, and similar abhorrence, the reality of that infernal art [witchcraft], which was able to control the eternal order of the planets, and the voluntary operations of the human mind. . . . They believed, with the wildest inconsistency, that this preternatural dominion of the air, of earth, and of hell, was exercised, from the vilest motives of malice or gain, by some wrinkled hags and itinerant sorcerers, who passed their obscure lives in penury and contempt.

Edward Gibbon

Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.

Edward Gibbon

Greek is doubtless the most perfect [language] that has been contrived by the art of man.

Edmond de Goncourt

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

Edmond de Goncourt

Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum.

Edith Schaeffer

All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities

Edith Schaeffer

There are various art forms we may or may not have talent for, may or may not have time for, and we may or may not be able to express ourselves in, but we ought to consider this fact-that whether we choose to be an environment or not, we are. We produce an environment other people have to live in. We should be conscious of the fact that this environment which we produce by our very 'being' can affect the people who live with us or work with us.

Edith Sitwell

the arts are life accelerated and concentrated.

Edith Sitwell

Art is magic, not logic. This craze for the logical spirit in irrational shape is part of the present harmful mania for uniformity ...

Edith Sitwell

"It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees."

Edith Sitwell

What an artist is for is to tell us what we see but do not know that we see.

Edith Sitwell

Poetry is the deification of reality.

Edith Sitwell

I am one of those unhappy persons who inspire bores to the greatest flights of art.

Edith Sitwell

All great art contains an element of the irrational.

Edith Wharton

Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.

Edith Wharton

In all the arts abundance seems to be one of the surest signs of vocation.

Edith Wharton

I think sometimes that it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather exhausting; but when I see the stupid Italians I have met here, completely insensitive to their surroundings, and ignorant of the treasures of art and history among which they have grown up, I begin to think it is better to be an American, and bring to it all a mind and eye unblunted by custom.

Edith Wharton

Until the raw ingredients of a pudding make a pudding, I shall never believe that the raw material of sensation and thought can make a work of art without the cook's intervening.

Edith Wharton

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

Edith Wharton

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Eddie Murphy

I'm the artist when I'm doing music that I am when I'm acting. I'm everything.

Eddie Murphy

If you're an artist like a really, really long time, it stops being a performance. I'm not performing anymore. I reveal myself to the audience. I show you some of me. It's not a show no more.

Dawn Powell

The artist who really loves people loves them so well the way they are he sees no need to disguise their characteristics-he loves them whole, without retouching. Yet the word used for this unqualifying affection is 'cynicism'.

Dean Acheson

If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.

David Walker

I believe that the making of art is primarily for the benefit of the artist. If what the artist has created communicates messages and feelings to others, then it is because of the universality of the human experience that is speaking through the work of art.

David Walker

Karate is for life, not points.

David Rockefeller

I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment.

David Rockefeller

The role of a museum of modern art is to make a good selection and identify what we believe to be the coming movements, and that requires taste.

David Horowitz

In Washington, of course, evading responsibility is an art form, so it is not always easy to tell who's responsible for which mess.