Art and Literature

See Also:BOOKS, MUSIC, POETS/POETRY, WRITERS/WRITING

1. Aesthetics is for the artist like ornithology is for the birds —Barnett Newman, New York Times Book Review, February 18, 1968
2. Art is a jealous mistress —Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. Art is an absolute mistress —Charlotte Cushman
4. Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization —Lincoln Steffens
5. Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold they can no longer be worn —John Updike
6. Art is like religion. As long as you do your best to stamp it out of existence, it flourishes in spite of you, like weeds in a garden. But if you try and cultivate it, and it becomes a popular success, it goes to the dogs at once —Jane Wardle
7. Art is science in the flesh —Jean Cocteau
8. Art is wild as a cat and quite separate from civilization —Stevie Smith
9. The artist, like the neurotic, has withdrawn from an unsatisfying reality into this world of imagination; but, unlike the neurotic, he knew how to find a way back from it and once more to get a firm foothold in reality —Sigmund Freud
10. Artists … like bees, they must put their lives into the sting they give —Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. Art, like eros, stirs senses to full life, demands devotion —Steven Millhauser
12. Art like life is an open secret —Lawrence Durrell
13. Art, like life, should be free, since both are experimental —George Santayana
14. Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere —G. K. Chesterton
15. Art, like the microscope, reveals many things that the naked eye does not see —George Moore
16. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life —Sir John Lubbock
17. Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness —George Jean Nathan
18. I have seen the beauty evaporate from poems and pictures, exquisite not so long ago, like hoar frost before the morning sun —W. Somerset Maugham
19. In art, as in diet, as in spiritual life, the same rules of elimination apply: the more one can do without the better —Anne Freemantle
20. In art, as in love, instinct is enough —Anatole France
21. In art, as in politics, there is no such thing as gratitude —George Bernard Shaw
22. In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others —Andre Maurois, New York Times, April 14, 1963
23. (Nine times out of ten,) in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed —H. L. Mencken
24. Literature, like a gypsy, to be picturesque, should be a little ragged —Douglas Jerrold
25. Literature, like virtue, is its own reward —Lord Chesterfield
26. Literature’s like a big railway station … there’s a train starting every minute —Edith Wharton

    In her short story, The Angel at the Grave, Wharton continues the simile as follows: “People are not going to hang around the waiting room. If they can’t get to a place when they want to, they go somewhere else.”

27. It [empty white canvas] looks like an anemic nun in a snow storm —James Rosenquist, quoted in television documentary about his work, 1987
28. Modern paintings are like women. You’ll never enjoy them if you try to understand them —Harold Coffin
29. Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication —Rebecca West
30. Naivete in art is like zero in a number; its importance depends on the figure it is united with —Henry James
31. One must act in painting as in life, directly —Pablo Picasso, Time interview
32. Two modern paintings … like Rorschach inkblots gone to seed —Pat Conroy
33. A painting requires as much cunning as the perpetration of a crime —Edgar Degas
34. A picture is a poem without words —Latin proverb
35. (Some of the canvases had no pictures at all, just colors,) swirls and patches and planes of color, thickened and lumped, like hunks of emotion —Dan Wakefield
36. Without favor art is like a windmill without wind —John Ray’s Proverbs
37. The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period —Samuel Butler