John Greenleaf Whittier Quotes

No more than a famous master can be replaced and another take over the completion of the half-finished painting he has left behind can the great poet and thinker, the great statesman and the great soldier, be replaced. For their activity lies always in the province of art. It is not mechanically trained but inborn by God's grace.

Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled.

Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.

Speaking of August Rodin: He raised his world above us in an immense arc, and made it a part of nature.

Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him.

What marks the artist is his power to shape the material of pain we all have.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

Picasso was hugely innovative, and, wow, did he have facility, amazing ability, but I don't think he painted a masterpiece.

Most people in the Western world grow up with the received wisdom that Mozart was a genius. But few people necessarily know why. More than anyone else, he captured this something which is the human condition, the fine line that we all constantly dance between joy and pain, between absolute happiness and absolute heartbreak.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

I didn't watch 'The A-Team' movie. I'm an artist. You can't re-paint a Rembrandt. You can't duplicate that; I don't care who you get.

I think my heart always goes out to men at the peak of their celebrity who checked out. There's such an odd, horrible trend in my lifetime for it - Kurt Cobain, David Foster Wallace, Alexander McQueen, Heath Ledger.

I'm not saying I'm the best. There are many painters in the world. But there is only one Picasso.

If Kanye was not in the equation, I literally wouldn't even be here. His music pushed hip-hop - the man is a master at taking a complex idea and presenting it in a way that is accessible for everyone.

True imagination is not fanciful daydreaming; it is fire from heaven.

In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.

My definition [of genius] would be about being completely involved in your art form. So that's outside of sciences. Within the arts it's about taking people on a journey, being able to involve me completely-whether you're singing a song, whether it's in the theater, whether you're dancing-if you can make me forget I'm sitting in a seat, that's my definition of genius.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.

O painter, take care lest the greed for gain prove a stronger incentive than renown in art, for to gain this renown is a far greater thing than is the renown of riches.

Only mediocrities progress. An artist revolves in a cycle of masterpieces, the first of which is no less perfect than the last.

My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater.