Art

Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. God is Jesus.

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

I have ... a terrible need ... shall I say the word? ... of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

As an artist, a man has no home in Europe save in Paris.

In architecture the pride of man his triumph over gravitation his will to power assume a visible form. Architecture is a sort of oratory of power by means of forms.

Science and art have that in common that everyday things seem to them new and attractive.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men and things in this manner with Yes and No. Everything is arranged so that the worst of tastes, the taste for the unconditional, should be cruelly fooled and abused until a man learns to put a little art into his feelings and rather to risk trying even what is artificial — as the real artists of life do.

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

The great works are produced in such an ecstasy of love that they must always be unworthy of it, however great their worth otherwise.

Books that teach us to dance: There are writers who, by portraying the impossible as possible, and by speaking of morality and genius as if both were high-spirited freedom, as if man were rising up on tiptoe and simply had to dance out of inner pleasure.

For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself, whether it be by means of this or that poetry or art; only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold. Whoever is dissatisfied with himself is constantly ready for revenge, and we others will be his victims, if only by having to endure his ugly sight.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

Giving style” to one’s character - a great and rare art! It is exercised by those who see all the strengths and weaknesses of their own natures and then comprehend them in an artistic plan until everything appears as art and reason and even weakness delights the eye.

Art as the single superior counter-force against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence.

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et Circen.

Art is essentially the affirmation, the blessing, and the deification of existence.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.