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Art and Religion are then two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind. Clive Bell, 1881-1964, English art critic
Living is my job and my art. Montaigne aka Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essais, 1580
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: –
We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves. William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, 1798
Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced. Leo Tolstoy
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious – the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Albert Einstein
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. Albert Einstein
True art is characterised by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. Albert Einstein
Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art. Virginia Woolf
It is only in his work that an artist can find reality and satisfaction, for the actual world is less intense than the world of his invention and consequently his life, without recourse to violent disorder, does not seem very substantial. The right condition for him is that in which his work in not only convenient but unavoidable. Tennessee Williams
Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts. Baruch Spinoza
Art is significant deformity. Roger Fry
Art thief is a man who takes pictures. George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty audio
The notion that there is an underlying structure – a world within the world of the atom – captures the imagination of artists at once. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 10/13: World Within World, BBC 1973
The cubist painters for example are obviously inspired by the families of crystals. ibid.
Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny each other’s existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Ingmar Bergman
For archaeologists this realisation that art, language and thought was all the same thing was a huge breakthrough. Suddenly what they had to look for was clear. Discover the earliest forms of human art and you would have found the day we learned to think. BBC Horizon: The Day We Learned to Think, BBC 2003
And they found more: intricately worked statuettes. Thousands of pieces of jewellery. Here at last in Europe was the evidence archaeologists had been looked for ... And it all dated from the same period: about thirty-five thousand years ago. ibid.
Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you ‘arts’ people, you’re not only ignorant of these magnificent things, you’re rather proud of knowing nothing. Ian McEwan, The Child in Time, 1987
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. John Steinbeck
Great art, Miss Campbell, needs no propaganda. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie VI starring Geraldine McEwan & Amanda Kirby & Lynsey Baxter & Vivienne Ross et al, Brodie, ITV 1978