Henry Steele Commager Quotes

What are books but folly, and what is an education but an arrant hypocrisy, and what is art but a curse when they touch not the heart and impel it not to action?

To some it is Napoleon, to some it is a philosophical struggle, to me it is allegro con brio.

I've always been into asking the big questions; I'm the last guy out the door at closing time cuz I was sittin' around 'til the wee hours with the other ones who were asking the same things.

The arts are what makes life worth living. You've got food, you've got shelter, yeah. But the things that make you laugh, make you cry, make you connect - make you love are communicated through the arts. They aren't extras.

London, thou art the flower of cities all! Gemme of all joy, jasper of jocunditie.

A world without poetry and art would be too much like one without birds or flowers: bearable but a lot less enjoyable.

It's just endless what you can learn from a single work of art. You can fill up the crevices of your life, the cracks of your life, the places where the mortar comes out and falls away-you can fill it up with the love of art.

Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.

I studied art history and philosophy and took economics and political science classes. I just took whatever I wanted and I didn't worry about grades and I read and learned a lot, and I didn't have much of a social life, so it was deeply absorbing.

I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.

Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light.

Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.

I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting - the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

History after all is the true poetry.

A lot of philosophy is bull***t, but a lot of it is what we write songs about too. And it's organizing your thoughts, organizing your intellect.

We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in Art.

In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills, and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize.

The secret of life is in art.