Orison Swett Marden Quotes

My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.

Man does not live by bread alone.

You're lacking a human dimension of some sort if you're not interested in the arts.

How essential it is in youth to acquire some intellectual or artistic tastes, in order to furnish the mind, to be able to live inside a mind with attractive and interesting pictures on the walls.

There's more to life than physical and material.

I wouldn't want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer - figuratively, anyway - if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world.

The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.

One can make no better investment than the cultivation of a taste for the beautiful, for it will bring rainbow hues and enduring joys to the whole life. It will not only greatly increase one's capacity for happiness, but also one's efficiency.

All work done mindfully rounds us out, helps complete us as persons.

It is brilliant going to the theatre and being forced to sit and listen and think about life. It can be almost a near-religious experience.

Others may prefer mindless entertainment, but on Sunday nights, you'll find me parked right in front of my television, munching popcorn and improving my intellect by watching 'Masterpiece Classic.'

I couldn't recommend more that people put themselves in a situation where they can see a lot of work that they admire, and for free.

Encourage good music and art and literature in your homes. Homes that have a spirit of refinement and beauty will bless the lives of your children forever.

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

The people are not satisfied with life alone but demand literature and art as well.

If you're not educated to enjoy the arts, if you're not taken to a concert, or you don't hear something beautiful, you don't know what you're missing.

The arts help complete a person. I truly believe that.

I don't know if I actually respect other artists as people as much as I should. I look at their work as excellent data that feeds my mind as nature feeds my body.

I'll read a book. I'll watch a documentary or a film or whatever. I'll go to an art exhibit and just try and open myself to influence.

The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

If we expose kids to books and art, nothing but good can come from it.

I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.

Man cannot live by bread alone. Man after all is composed of intellect and soul.

I do not believe that to be religious in the best, authentic sense a man has to destroy his love life and mummify himself, body and soul.

A cheerful, intelligent face is the end of culture.