Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”
—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849
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Quotes
The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command.
—Alexander of Tralles, c. 600What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced.
—Victor Hugo, 1862The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1870Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.
—Patricia Highsmith, 1960Education—a debt due from present to future generations.
—George Peabody, 1852To live for a time close to great minds is the best kind of education.
—John Buchan, 1940The workers are the saviors of society, the redeemers of the race.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1905Every gift has a personality—that of its giver.
—Nuruddin Farah, 1992A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
—Francis Bacon, 1625Worry over what has not occurred is a serious malady.
—Solomon ibn Gabirol, 1050