Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry Miller

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Henry Miller

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

Henry Miller

The art of living is based on rhythm - on give & take, ebb & flow, light & dark, life & death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good & bad, right & wrong, yours & mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, 'the dance of life,' metamorphosis.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

I am certainly not regenerating French art, but am struggling hard to accomplish something on an unlucky piece of paper which has done me no harm at all, and on which, believe me, I am doing nothing that is good... I hope things will improve eventually; as it is, I am pretty wretched.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.

Henning Mankell

Have I ever written anything that has really changed something? What I believe is that you can't change anything without using art. I believe that the drops wear away the stone. I try to be part of that army.

Henri Bergson

Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself.

Henri Bergson

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.

Henri Bergson

If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

If, in making a portrait, you hope to grasp the interior silence of a willing victim, it's very difficult, but you must somehow position the camera between his shirt and his skin. Whereas with pencil drawing, it is up to the artist to have an interior silence.

Henri Frederic Amiel

To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. Critical genius means an aptitude for discerning truth under appearances or in disguises which conceal it; for discovering it in spite of the errors of testimony, the frauds of tradition, the dust of time, the loss or alteration of texts. It is the sagacity of the hunter whom nothing deceives for long, and whom no ruse can throw off the trail.

Henri Frederic Amiel

The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Let us be true: this is the highest maxim of art and of life, the secret of eloquence and of virtue, and of all moral authority.

Henri Frederic Amiel

The great artist and thinker are the simplifiers.

Henri Frederic Amiel

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.

Cat Stevens

It seems to be the easiest thing in the world these days to make scurrilous accusations against Muslims, and in my case it directly impacts on my relief work and damages my reputation as an artist. The harm done is often difficult to repair.

Cassandra Clare

Must I go bound while you go free Must I love a manwho doesn't love me Must I be born with so little art As to love a man who'll break my Heart

Cassandra Clare

I have mastered many things in my life. Navigating the streets of London, speaking French without an accent, dancing the quadrille, the Japanese art of flower arranging, lying at charades, concealing a highly intoxicated state, delighting young women with my charms..." Tessa stared. "Alas," he went on, "no one has ever actually referred to me as 'the master,' or 'the magister,' either. More's the pity...

Cassandra Clare

Mene mene tekel upsharin,' Jace said with a faint smile. 'You don't recognize it? It's from the Bible, vampire. The old one. That's your book, isn't it?' Just because I'm Jewish doesn't mean I've memorized the Old Testament.' It's the Writing on the Wall. "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end; thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." It's a portent of doom--it means the end of an empire.

George Eliot

What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery.

George Eliot

Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.

George Eliot

The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.

George Eliot

... there is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know.

George Eliot

Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation ...

George Eliot

It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine--something like being blind, while people talk of the sky.

George Eliot

I think the effective use of quotation is an important point in the art of writing. Given sparingly, quotations serve admirably as a climax or as a corroboration, but when they are long and frequent, they seriously weaken the effect of a book. We lose sight of the writer - he scatters our sympathy among others than himself - and the ideas which he himself advances are not knit together with our impression of his personality.

George Eliot

Lord! Thou art with Thy people still; they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those that have not known Thee; open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them, and saying, "Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life"--see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do"--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen.

George Eliot

What is your religion? I mean-not what you know about religion but the belief that helps you most?

Grace Gummer

The arts have always been in and around my life.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The end-purpose of all art is enjoyment!

Gottfried Leibniz

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypothesis, is like the art of decyphering, in which an ingenious conjecture greatly shortens the road.