Eleonora Duse Quotes

The affairs of music ought, somehow, to terminate in the love of the beautiful.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.

But of works of art little can be said.

Music is meant to be a beautiful thing.

Some people like to paint trees. I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees.

Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.

But however measurable, there is much more life in music than mathematics or logic ever dreamed of.

What one person might see as violent, someone else may see as beautiful. Maybe even art.

What love is to man, music is to the arts and to mankind. Music is love itself - it is the purest, most ethereal language of passion, showing in a thousand ways all possible changes of color and feeling; and though true in only a single instance, it yet can be understood by thousands of men - who all feel differently.

Because the beauty of songs, I think, is if you do it right a lot of people can relate to it in their own way and make their own meaning out of things.

Music is an expression, a deep-seated feeling.

Art is great. At its best, it engages the intellect and challenges the spirit; it connects us across history and reminds us of our humanity.

For me, music is pure abstraction.

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.

Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

A song should have all the color and beauty of every rose.

A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.

Science disembodies; art embodies.

As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.

The object of art is to give life shape.

I love art. It is uplifting.

Even luxuries are arranged according to ideas and ideals, to make them reflect as much of thought-life as possible - and this is Art.