Quotes About Arts

Dancing and building are the two primary and essential arts. The art of dancing stands at the source of all the arts that expressthemselves first in the human person. The art of building, or architecture, is the beginning of all the arts that lie outside the person; and in the end they unite. Music, acting, poetry proceed in the one mighty stream; sculpture, painting, all the arts of design, in the other. There is no primary art outside these two arts, for their origin is far earlier than man himself; and dancing came first.

The dance is the most universal of the arts, since, as Goethe justly said, it could destroy all the fine arts. It is an expression of all the emotions of the spirit, from the lowest to the highest. It accompanies and stimulates all the processes of life, from hunting and farming to war and fertility, from love to death. It enables, in turn other arts to come into being: music, song, drama. Despite all their riches, the dance is no formless complex, but a simple unity.

Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.

Both of my parents were incredibly supportive of me being in any arts, because they were both in the arts. They weren't the typical story of, "Oh, get a real job. You need to make money." They basically said, "Yup, be an artist. You'll be broke your whole life but you'll be happy."

There's the inherent value of the arts in terms of what that does for the quality of life and culture. The arts - in my case theater, play-writing - is all about community.

There are some arts which to those that possess them are painful, but to those that use them are helpful, a common good to laymen, but to those that practise them grievous. Of such arts there is one which the Greeks call medicine. For the medical man sees terrible sights, touches unpleasant things, and the misfortunes of others bring a harvest of sorrows that are peculiarly his; but the sick by means of the art rid themselves of the worst of evils, disease, suffering, pain and death.

I don't doubt that at the dawn of martial arts, the main goal was to beat up one's opponents in the most effective way possible. But then, indirectly, the alchemy of martial arts began to strike some chords deep within the spirit of many individuals, transforming living war-machines into poets, artists, and philosophers.

My whole childhood, that made my skin curl. I was looking for something authentic. I think that drove me into the arts, I really do. That really did it. The only other thing that made me survive, as a human being, was getting into the arts. I was surrounded by people that were very bright and they invited you in. They were gracious. So, it gave me a great education.

I'm a sworn enemy of convention. I despite the conventional in anything, even the arts. I paint canvasses on the floor and drove one art teacher out of his mind. But that's just the way I paint best.

What I feel fortunate about is that I'm still astonished, that things still amaze me. And I think that that's the great benefit of being in the arts, where the possibility for learning never disappears, where you basically have to admit you never learn it.

Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry, theories of structures, or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture- literally a vision-in the minds of those who built them. Society is where it is today because people had the perception; the images and the imagination; the creativity that the Arts provide, to make the world the place we live in today.

When quite young I can remember I had no thought or wish of surpassing others. I was rather taken with a liking of little arts and bits of learning. My mother carefully fostered a liking for botany, giving me a small microscope and many books, which I yet have. Strange as it may seem, I now believe that botany and the natural system, by exercising discrimination of kinds, is the best of logical exercises. What I may do in logic is perhaps derived from that early attention to botany.

Lillian Gish thought that there should be a cabinet position for the arts and I think she was right. I think she was right.

San Francisco has long been a leader in the arts, nurturing generations of painters, sculptors, poets, novelists, playwrights, film-makers, and performing artists and innovators of every kind.

The present government is very insistent that business sponsorship should replace government sponsorship of the arts. Business sponsorship won't happen unless you make tax concessions, which they won't.

Usually action films have a formula: good guy gets in trouble, his wife dies, friends have problems, so he goes to the mountain, learns martial arts, comes back, and kills the bad guy.

Nothing reveals more about the inner life of a people than their arts.

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.

Artists in each of the arts seek after and care for nothing but love.

I've been learning martial arts since I was 8 years old.

I can tell for sure, the technologists have made it clear that they don't care about musicians. The arts have been sacrificed on the altar of technological advancement.

How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want of books, or arts, and even of gentler virtues. How tenaciously we remember them!

If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius.

I turned to my mom and said, Im going to be a martial arts movie star. She didnt believe me, and neither did my dad. They both thought I would grow out of it. That it was a phase. I decided then I was going to do it or die trying.

All the arts are predominantly national, and therefore the Australian Film Commission should be funding us. The battle gets more and more vicious each year.

I had a great year with Bob Mintzer [at Laguardia School of Arts]. Bob is great. We could have just brought the clarinet or dealt with classical stuff, or brought the flute or just dealt with comp and arranging... what a great teacher.

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.

Dance is low on the totem pole of the arts, because you're not left with a painting... a book that will stay there, a score you can read.

I would never want to write a character who was not thoroughly herself or himself. She's a very specific creature in my mind, and she has her thoughts, which range from skin to American history, philosophy, and the arts.

Not only in antiquity but in our own times also laws have been passed...to secure good conditions for workers; so it is right that the art of medicine should contribute its portion for the benefit and relief of those for whom the law has shown such foresight...[We] ought to show peculiar zeal...in taking precautions for their safety. I for one have done all that lay in my power, and have not thought it beneath me to step into workshops of the meaner sort now and again and study the obscure operations of mechanical arts.

I wanted to be with the men I admired rather than the Scottish Arts Council crowd, so I spent a lot of time in graveyards. You get less trouble from the dead.

London clubland divides itself between the St James's refuge for toffs, and the Conquest of Cool, for the arts and media.

The arts not only imbue our sense of sight, balance, movement, touch and hearing, they also lift our logical minds - the traditional focus of modern education - into the reaches of possibility, invention and genius.

Civilization is so hard on the body that some have called it a disease, despite the arts that keep puny bodies alive to a greater average age, and our greater protection from contagious and germ diseases.

My dad was dean of fine arts at the university. I was casting bronzes in the school foundry. I was using the university as a playground.

I didn't start publishing literary texts until I had left Iraq. At the Academy [of Cinematic Arts] I was busy with short films.

I think a culture can really be elevated through the arts, and it's always a dream come true when I come across roles that enable me to fuse my love of storytelling with my passion for activism and raising social awareness.

The arts are not for the privileged few, but for the many. Their place is not on the periphery of daily life, but at its center. They should function not merely as another form of entertainment but, rather, should contribute significantly to our well being and happiness.

The theatre is the best way of showing the gap between what is said and what is seen to be done, and that is why, ragged and gap-toothed as it is, it has still a far healthier potential than some poorer, abandoned arts.

It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.

All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.

Music, of all the liberal arts, has the greatest influence over the passions, and it is that to which the legislator ought to give the greatest encouragement.

Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.

One of the things I want to do that's outside the realm of acting and the arts - although both have their place in this - is ending childhood hunger here in America.

But not only medicine, engineering, and painting are arts; living itself is an art in fact, the most important and at the same time the most difficult and complex art to be practiced by man.

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

First of all, the art of living; then as my ideal profession, poetry and philosophy, and as my real profession, plastic arts; in the last resort, for lack of income, illustrations.

No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity.