Huston Smith Quotes

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Painting and sculpture help other people to see what a wonderful world we live in.

Poetry and art nourish the soul of the world with the flavor-filled substances of beauty, wisdom and truth.

When people say, 'I don't get art' ... that means art is working.

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

You will never love art well until you love what she mirrors better.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

We all agree now - by 'we' I mean intelligent people under sixty - that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

Art is the ultimate luxury good, but one that can make you think, give a you a blast of beauty and enhance your life. Even if the work's made of plasticine.

The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you.

The work of art itself is . . . a vibrant, magical, and exemplary object which returns us to the world in some way more open and enriched.

Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.

The delight we find in art amounts to recognition of a saving grace, to an acknowledgment that the problem of life has a solution implicit in its own nature, though not yet formulated by the intellect.

The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

Art is an infinitely precious good, a draught both refreshing and cheering which restores the stomach and the mind to the natural equilibrium of the ideal.

Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation.

I don't know if it's art, but I know I like it.

Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar. We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother tongue.