Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

I can be quite surprised by what makes me cry, but it's usually spiritual things.

I like music that is able to stir my soul. My music is a spiritual exercise

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.

Painting... in which the inner and the outer man are inseparable, transcends technique, transcends subject and moves into the realm of the inevitable.

If you haven't had at least a slight poetic crack in the heart, you have been cheated by nature.

Mozart's music is like an X-ray of your soul - it shows what is there, and what isn't.

I think that a good deal of poetry and art gives us some sense of access to another's voice, perception, texture of thought, imagination. Sometimes it gives us better access to the strangeness in ourselves.

Art is the window to man's soul. Without it, he would never be able to see beyond his immediate world; nor could the world see the man within.

It's the emotion of it that hits me, more than anything technical.

Art is the skin of the soul.

Individuals have to find a place to experience a profundity of feeling, and art is a means to that.

The church is an institution of music and of production and performance, and it has to do with taking people to places inside of themselves and giving them an opportunity to sit deep in their own feelings, and to be together and deeply alone at the same time, and to process things.

I'm an emotional person. I chose films based on emotions.

People have experiences in art museums today that they used to have in church.

Lucky people develop a relationship with a certain kind of art that becomes spiritual, almost religious, and doesn’t mean, you know, church stuff, but it means you’re just never the same.

Do not try to explain feelings. Live everything intensely and treasure what you feel as a gift from God.

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.

I never wanted to grow a thicker skin; I felt a real sense of pride in my thin skin, and in a weird way, I still do, because it's my thin skin that allows me to empathize with other people. It's the thing that allows me to create vulnerable art. It's the thing that allows me to create other feelings and make songs that actually grab people and touch people. I feel like I've spent my life fighting that thicker skin because I don't want to become an embittered asshole.

When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art. But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. It is something we cannot know in any conclusive way. We can know only if it speaks within our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.

The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

The art of music, rather more daughter than imitator of nature, in her impressive and mysterious language minding and educating us, rouses directly our temper and rules us to the depths of our souls.

Music gets us in touch with our emotions in a way that's more intimate than any other art form.

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

Music was a thing of the soul — a rose-lipped shell that murmured of the eternal sea — a strange bird singing the songs of another shore.