Thomas Carlyle Quotes

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

I got a book token for Christmas and exchanged it for a book called A History of Art, and that book (which I still have-battered and falling to pieces) became more precious to me than any Bible.

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

Films and gramophone records, music, books and buildings show clearly how vigorously a man's life and work go on after his 'death,' whether we feel it or not, whether we are aware of the individual names or not. There is no such thing as death according to our view!

A great performance like Lady Macbeth may be forgotten. Writing endures.

I've just finished my 20th book this past year and I'm working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I'll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I'm an artist too.

Art is the signature of civilizations.

The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.

Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity.

Art is the permanence of a civilization.

Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

I want to leave behind a literary legacy.

It's not necessarily all about commercial success. It's about inspiring in the world and having what you do seen as art and a contribution to the world.

I think my legacy is important because my songs - perhaps more than those of any other songwriter I know - cover every movement from 1965 on, socially and artistically. If you want songs about ecology, I've got ecology songs; if you want songs about spirituality, I've got spiritual songs.

Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become.

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people.

Two things significantly distinguish human beings from the other animals; an interest in the past and the possibility of language. Brought together they make a third: Art. The invisible city not calculated to exist. Beyond the lofty pretensions of the merely ceremonial, long after the dramatic connivings of plitical life, like it or not, it remains. Time past eternally present and undestroyed.

I imagine the earth when I am no more: Women's dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley. Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born, Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.

Only art and science can raise men to the level of God.

All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities

I thought that if I were going into old age I would want to do what [Giuseppe] Verdi did, which is to write extraordinary things, and to really find myself.

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic.

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.