The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses.
It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise.
'Tis more by art, than force of numerous strokes.
Pictoribus atque poetis
Quidlibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas.
Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.
Piety in art—poetry in art—Puseyism in art—let us be careful how we confound them.
Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg.
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart,
But the devil whoops, as he whooped of old; It's clever, but is it art?
Art is Power.
The counterfeit and counterpart
Of Nature reproduced in art.
Art is the child of Nature; yes,
Her darling child in whom we trace
The features of the mother's face,
Her aspect and her attitude.
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
For Art is Nature made by Man
To Man the interpreter of God.
The heart desires.
The hand refrains,
The Godhead fires,
The soul attains.
Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur;
Arte levis currus, arte regendus Amor.
By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the light chariot, and establish love.
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
Die Kunst ist zwar nicht das Brod, aber der Wein des Lebens.
Art is indeed not the bread but the wine of life.
Greater completion marks the progress of art, absolute completion usually its decline.
Seraphs share with thee
Knowledge; But Art, O Man, is thine alone!
Von der Freiheit gesaugt wachsen die Kunste der Lust.
All the arts of pleasure grow when suckled by freedom.
Kunst ist die rechte Hand der Natur. Diese hat nur Geschöpfe, jene hat Menschen gemacht.
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.
Schwer ist die Kunst, vergänglich ist ihr Preis.
Art is difficult, transient is her reward.
Illa maximi medicorum exclamatio est, Vitam brevem esse, longam artem.
That is the utterance of the greatest of physicians, that life is short and art long.
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow.
In framing an artist, art hath thus decreed,
To make some good, but others to exceed.
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed.
It was Homer who gave laws to the artist.
