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Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them.

— Leo Tolstoy What is Art? (1897)

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Art

More quotes by Leo Tolstoy

I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain.

Confession (1882)

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

What is Art? (1897)

The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.

War and Peace (1865)

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

What Is To Be Done? (1886)

God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.
God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter.

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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)

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