Northrop Frye Quotes

Observations always involve theory.

To me, what makes physics physics is that experiment is intimately connected to theory. It's one whole.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

Science has to do with facts, art with phenomena. To science, phenomena are of use only as they lead to facts; and to art, facts are of use only as they lead to phenomena.

Science provides an understanding of a universal experience. Arts provide a universal understanding of a personal experience.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries - the arts and humanities.

People assume that science is a very cold sort of profession, whereas writing novels is a warm and fuzzy intuitive thing. But in fact, they are not at all different.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.

Science walks forward on two feet, namely theory and experiment.

Therefore, the two processes, that of science and that of art, are not very different. Both science and art form in the course of the centuries a human language by which we can speak about the more remote parts of reality, and the coherent sets of concepts as well as the different styles of art are different words or groups of words in this language.

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

Science is a combination of theory and experiment and the two together are how you make progress.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

In order that the facts obtained by observation and experiment may be capable of being used in furtherance of our exact and solid knowledge, they must be apprehended and analysed according to some Conceptions which, applied for this purpose, give distinct and definite results, such as can be steadily taken hold of and reasoned from.

I think art is more glorious than life but not more real.

Experience by itself is not science.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

I've come to realize that artists and scientists are alike. They go through the same processes using different tools. They are both driven to answer the question, 'What if?'