Alain de Botton Quotes

Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.

I do believe that painting can change the world.

I'm not the type to turn to drugs and alcohol, but I do have a profound devotion to art and music - and children.

As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me.

Art often reflects what's going on in the world, and we're seeing stories that are very diverse and that are lead and made by women because that's what's in our world.

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

I have never really been a great artist. I have been a human being that has loved art, which is not the same thing. But I have loved and believed in art and the idea of universal brotherhood so much, that I have put everything I have into them, and I have been blessed.

The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts.

The Hindus are busy letting themselves be seen riding in Cadillacs instead of smearing themselves with sandalwood paste and bowing in front of Ganpati. The Moslems would rather miss evening prayer than the new Disney movie. The Buddhists think it's more important to take over in the name of Stalin and Progress than to meditate on the four basic sorrows. And we don't even have to mention Christianity or Judaism.

Fatherland before everything, art afterward.

In the material world, where everything is valued, when you commit yourself to God, beauty and love, it can be mistaken for extravagance.

Words like 'God' and 'Allah' must go the way of 'Apollo' and 'Baal' or they will unmake our world.

The most joyous painting is not done for the art world, it is done for the inner world.

You can't be a creative person and not fall in love with everything. Every movie I've made there's a complicated, twisted love affair with.

The arts, it has been said, cannot change the world, but they may change human beings who might change the world.

It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.

There is no better deliverance from the world than through art, and a man can form no surer bond with it.

The air of the New World seems favorable to the art of declamation.

Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman--the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.

The student learns rules but all the rules in the world never make a picture.

If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling.

Artists make their work to be seen by others. Well, really we do it to please ourselves, but whatever your art is, you want it to be seen by an audience. In theory, especially in the independent world, ironically, you do stand a chance of making a bit of money if the film gets distribution.

The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.

Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that's just fine with the artist.