Quotes to inspire and reflect

The sun visits cesspools without being defiled.

The lion is ashamed, it’s true, when he / Hunts with the fox:—of foxes, not of guile.

Bad company is as instructive as debauchery: one is indemnified for the loss of innocence by the loss of prejudice.

Knowing sorrow well, I learn the way to succor the distressed.

At bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone, and for one person to be able to advise or even help another, a lot must happen, a lot must go well, a whole constellation of things must come right in order once to succeed.

The bird thinks it is an act of kindness to give the fish a lift in the air.

We are doubly willing to jump jnto the water after some one who has fallen in, if there are people present who have not the courage to do so.

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can never exhaust and which gives us year by year a revenue of pleasurable activity.

The aid we can give each other is only incidental, lateral, and sympathetic.

’Tis but a base, ignoble mind / That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

May God grant me love for that which has splendor; / but in this time of my life let me strive lor attainable things.

Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration.

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

Every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad; hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

This is the artist, then—life's hungry man, the glutton of eternity, beauty’s miser, glory’s slave.

If art [is] to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.

The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

Fertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.

The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men.

Art imitates Nature in this: not to dare is to dwindle.

The refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.

Most of the faint intimations of immortality of which we are occasionally aware would seem to arise out of Art or the materials of Art.

The artist is the lover of Nature, therefore he is her slave and her master.

Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age.

Every artist is in everything he creates, and indeed if the truth is told, every person is i?i his life, in his work, whatever his work may be, and this is visible in his face, figure, stance, movement, and totality.

The man who would emancipate art from discipline and reason is trying to elude rationality, not merely in art, but in all existence.

The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.

Art is the response to the demand for entertainment, for the stimulation of our senses and imagination, and truth enters into it only as it subserves these ends.

Art, like life, should be free, since both are experimental.

We must not subject him who creates to the desires of the multitude. It is, rather, his creation that must become the multitude’s desire.

To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men.

An artist should be well read in the best books, and thoroughly high bred, both in heart and bearing. In a word, he should be fit for the best society, and should keep out of it.

Most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious existences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.

Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal.

I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.

Less disappointing than life is, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

As to the artists, do we not know that he only of them whom love inspires has the light of fame?—he whom love touches not walks in darkness.

The classical artist can be recognized by his sincerity, the romantic by his laborious insincerity.

Art is what remains of religion: the dance above the yawning abyss.

Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist.

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

The trend toward pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence— just art with no other pretenses.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Just as our historical beginnings are utterly mysterious—why are we born? why when and as we are?—so too are the beginnings of works of art and of u , • , » artists.