Quotes to inspire and reflect

If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

The only truth is music.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Music is the Voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

The opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

Opera in English, is about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire.

No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do.

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I am here to live out loud.

Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.

The English public, as a mass, takes no interest in a work of art until it is told that the work in question is immoral.

Good Artists copy, great artists steal.

Everything you can imagine is real.

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay my American Express bill.

Time has convinced me of one thing: Television is for appearing on--not for looking at.

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

When they asked Jack Benny to do something for the Actor's Orphanage - he shot both his parents and moved in.

The better the actor the more stupid he is.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic.

We're actors — we're the opposite of people!

Show me a great actor and I'll show you a lousy husband. Show me a great actress, and you've seen the devil.

When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation’? I say, 'Your salary’.

It is in the ability to deceive oneself that the greatest talent is shown.

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning.

Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.