John Stuart Blackie Quotes

All art worthy of the name is religious.

I always feel as if I stood naked for the fire of Almighty God to go through me--and it's rather an awful feeling. One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist.

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religion of Nature.

It’s one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.

Never was I so devout as when I composed The Creation. I knelt down each day to pray to God to give me strength for my work....When I was working on The Creation I felt so impregnated with Divine certainty, that before sitting down to the piano, I would quietly and confidently pray to God to grant me the talent that was needed to praise Him worthily.

Religion is simply art bastardized out of all recognition.

People for whom art is religion can say, "What I love about art is that it points to a higher reality." Well, fine, but the time comes when the smart thing for such a person to do is to let go of the fun of the art and get into the hard work of attaining and understanding that higher reality, unmixed with worldly games.

Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God.

All real art is, in its true sense, religious; it is a religious impulse; there is no such thing as a non-religious subject. But much bad or downright sacrilegious art depicts so-called religious subjects.

Jesus & his apostles & disciples were all artists

When I see Tiffany windows in churches across the United States, I get a sense of spiritual upliftment from that.

Art and literature are my surrogate religions.

I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

I think there is some overlap in terms of artistic desires and Christian desires.

My Catholic faith is my life. Any artist, if he is to be faithful to how he perceives the world and to the nature of his creative gifts, cannot divorce the two. To create is to love. To love is to create.

My way towards God has been to write music.

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

I adhere to the religion of art and music and small children.

Art without accomplishment becomes a form of faith, sustained more by the intensity of its common practice than by the pleasure it gives to its adherents in private.

I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso.

The epicenter of creativity and imagination should be the Church, reflecting the character and glory of God.

But genius is religious. It is a larger imbibing of the common heart.

The highest flights of charity, devotion, trust, patience, bravery to which the wings of human nature have spread themselves, have been flown for religious ideals.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin.