Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.
Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.
What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster!
The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
Parents are usually more careful to bestow knowledge on their children rather than virtue, the art of speaking well rather than doing well but their manners should be of the greatest concern.
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.
To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.
No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
It is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art consists.
The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.
Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you're born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called 'Antichrist Superstar.'
To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had... maybe I could even quit renting.
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Simplicity and repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.
People who don't like me talk about it as though I'm trash because I have tattoos. I find that insane because it's 2008, not the 1950s. Tattoos aren't limited to sailors. It's a form of art I find beautiful. I love it.
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.
There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Life is the art of being well deceived and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.
Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked ladies. Women's magazines also often feature pictures of naked ladies. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is hairy and lumpy and should not be seen by the light of day.
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't.