9 quotes
Art is the great and universal refreshment. For Art is never dogmatic; holds no brief for itself; you may take it, or you may leave it.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
He is but a poor philosopher who holds a view so narrow as to exclude forms not to his personal taste.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Art is that imaginative expression of human energy, which, through technical concretion of feeling and perception, tends to reconcile the individual with the universal, by exciting in him impersonal emotion.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Only out of stir and change is born new salvation. To deny that is to deny belief in man, to turn our backs on courage!
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
It is an age of stir and change, a season of new wine and old bottles. Yet, assuredly, in spite of breakages and waste, a wine worth the drinking is all the time being made.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Slowly, under our feet, beneath our consciousness, is forming that new philosophy, and it is in times of new philosophies that Art, itself in essence always a discovery, must flourish.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
What is Art but the perfected expression of self in contact with the world; and whether that self be of enlightening, or of fairy-telling temperament, is of no moment whatsoever. The tossing of abuse from realist to romanticist and back is but the sword-play of two one-eyed men with their blind side turned toward each other. Shall not each attempt be judged on its own merits?
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)
Of all kinds of human energy, Art is surely the most free, the least parochial; and demands of us an essential tolerance of all its forms. Shall we waste breath and ink in condemnation of artists, because their temperaments are not our own?
Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)