Art

Hardly any human being is capable of pursuing two professions or two arts rightly.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Great deeds give choice of many tales. Choose a slight tale, enrich it large, and then let wise men listen.

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.

In literature imitations do not imitate.

You can't throw too much style into a miracle.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.

The easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.

The public is the only critic whose judgment is worth anything at all.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

When you are painting you should take a flat mirror and often look at your work within it, and it will then be seen in reverse, and will appear to be by the hand of some other master, and you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way.

Of several bodies all equally larger and distant, that most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest.

I would venture to affirm that a man cannot attain excellence if he satisfy the ignorant and not those of his own craft, and if he be not ‘singular’ or ‘distant,’ or whatever you like to call him.

He who despises painting has no love for the philosophy in nature.

The good painter must paint two things: a person and the essence of his soul.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of color at long distances.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

The painter strives and competes with nature.

If on your own or by the criticism of others you discover error in your work, correct it then and there; otherwise in exposing your work to the public, you will expose your error also.

It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute one thing well.