Walter Pater Quotes

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.

It is only through Art and through Art only that we can realize our perfection; Through Art and art only that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

Politics is a part of life and art is about life. It doesn't mean that all the art has to be about politics - in fact, heaven forbid. But politics is a totally legitimate area of focus for any art, whether it's painting or songwriting or anything else, as much as sex is, as much as spirituality is, as much as any other behavior of people is.

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

Creating means living.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

It fascinates me to create beautiful paintings with the simplest means.

By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.

Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we’re living in. All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or natural in a good sense.

The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.

Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feeling.

Art means something very rare, an extraordinary achievement.

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless.

For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

The morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

The secret of life is in art.

Painting is more important than art.