John Dryden Quotes

Art compares to nature like wine to the grape.

Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.

The finest productions of human art are immensely short of the meanest work of Nature. The nicest artist cannot make a feather or the leaf of a tree.

Only a lunatic would think that art is superior to nature.

No form of nature is inferior to art; for the arts merely imitate natural forms.

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble; in a statue the marble must be like flesh.

To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.

Simplicity is natures first step, and the last of art.

Art owes its origin to Nature herself... this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, while the original teacher was that divine intelligence which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but like God Himself, if I may venture to say it.

Art will never be able to exist without nature.

The humblest painter is a true scholar; and the best of scholars the scholar of nature.

Nothing is art if it does not come from nature.

Land really is the best art.

The power of nature is what all art strives to be. The more we can get in tune with the harmony of the planet, the more our art can benefit from that relationship.

I believe it is one's duty to paint the rich and magnificent aspects of nature. We need gaiety and happiness, hope and love.

Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.

A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.

Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art.

The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.

Nature in no case cometh short of art, for the arts are copiers of natural forms.

What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it.... Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist. It is the soul of the individual that counts.

All art, all education, can be merely a supplement to nature.