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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.

— John Galsworthy Vague Thoughts On Art (1911)

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Art

More quotes by John Galsworthy

The value of a sentiment is the amount of sacrifice you are prepared to make for it.

If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.

Swan Song (1928)

It isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.

A Bit O' Love (1915)

Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.

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)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?

André Gide The Immoralist (1902)

A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean.

George MacDonald The Fantastic Imagination (1893)

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

José Ortega y Gasset The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Galsworthy (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.