Quotations

“Art without passion is merely technical skill.”

Original: Kunst uten lidenskap er bare teknisk ferdighet. — Insists that genuine artistic creation requires emotional fire · Essays on Art (Norwegian)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“Music reaches the soul in places where words alone cannot tread.”

Original: Musikken når inn til sjelen der ordene alene ikke strekker til. — Captures the transcendent emotional reach of musical art · Letter on art (Norwegian)

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

“Moments when eternal Beauty is seized travelling through time.”

A striking description of sudden experiences in which beauty seems to transcend ordinary time. · A Defence of Idealism

May (Julian) Sinclair

“For beauty is ageless, eternal and one, recognisable under all differences of form.”

Affirming beauty as something enduring that transcends changing artistic forms. · Essay, May Sinclair on Hilda Doolittle

May (Julian) Sinclair

“The poet is one who inspires far more than one who is inspired.”

Original: Le poète est celui qui inspire bien plus que celui qui est inspiré. — Éluard reverses the traditional image of the inspired poet, emphasising poetry's power to awaken something in others. · Preface to Ralentir travaux, 1930 (French)

Paul Éluard

“literary sacrilege—sacrilege against the dead in that which was best and noblest of them”

Her vehement view that unauthorised changes to hymns violate the author's sacred intent · Conversation (as recorded by William Alexander)

Cecil Frances Alexander

“You see what I wanted to say is just so and so, not something else.”

Her firm stance against well-meaning editorial alterations to her hymns · Conversation (as recorded by William Alexander)

Cecil Frances Alexander

“A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.”

Cooking as a divine and perfect art · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“There is a desire of property in the sanest and best man, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts.”

Property as a natural and artistic incentive · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

Walter Savage Landor

“Music is God's gift to man, the only art of Heaven given to earth, the only art of earth we take to Heaven.”

Elevating music as the divine bridge between mortal and eternal · Imaginary Conversations

Walter Savage Landor

“Didacticism is the death of art.”

A defence of art for its own sake against moralising · Essay or column (commonly attributed)

Alice Dunbar Nelson

“Picturesqueness is a lost art. We may expect at anytime to hear that a collar ad is blazing its electric lights atop of the largest pyramid.”

Lamenting the erosion of beauty and romance by modern commerce · Essay or column (commonly attributed)

Alice Dunbar Nelson

“America's greatest lyric poet.”

Masters's striking assessment of Vachel Lindsay's achievement as a lyric poet · Whitman-era literary criticism

Edgar Lee Masters

“What had enthralled me with Whitman was his conception of America as the field of a new art and music in which the people would be celebrated instead of kings.”

Reveals the democratic ideal that strongly shaped Masters's literary imagination · Across Spoon River

Edgar Lee Masters

“Beauty, which is probably the only thing of any basic significance in all the cosmos, ought to be our chief criterion.”

A striking expression of the aesthetic values underlying much of his thought · Essay, Cats and Dogs

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“It is not impossible that the intellectual upheaval attendant upon the present conflict will bring about a general simplification and rectification of taste.”

Reflecting on how historical upheaval can alter artistic taste · Essay, The Despised Pastoral

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“Conflict with time seems to me the most potent and fruitful theme in all human expression.”

Identifying humanity’s struggle against time as a fundamental artistic theme · Essay, Notes on Writing Weird Fiction

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

“Aesthetic theories have always been made from works of art, never the other way round.”

Original: Las estéticas se han hecho siempre sobre las obras de arte, y nunca viceversa. — Arguing that artistic theory should arise from artworks rather than dictate them · Article, Los jóvenes del Ultra, 1919 (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“To band together, unite or form groups in order to write verse or produce any kind of art is absurd, disagreeable and dangerous to the development of personality.”

Original: Agregarse, unirse, agruparse para escribir versos o producir cualquier género de arte es absurdo, antipático y peligroso para el desarrollo de la personalidad. — Warning that artistic movements can suppress individual creative identity · Article, Los jóvenes del Ultra, 1919 (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“I see no path for the artist other than to cultivate his personality with the utmost care and improve it without cease.”

Original: Yo no veo más camino para el artista que el de cultivar con todo empeño su personalidad y mejorarla sin cesar. — Making continual personal development central to artistic practice · Response to survey, ¿Qué es el Arte? ¿Qué debemos hacer?, 1920 (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“Art is something universal, or, if you prefer, individual, which in the end is the best form of universality.”

Original: El arte es cosa universal o si queréis individual, que al cabo es la mejor forma de universalidad. — Suggesting that genuine individuality is itself a path towards universality · Article, El modernismo y la ropa vieja, 1901 (Spanish)

Manuel Machado

“Art is not a matter of rhetoric, nor even of literature, but of personality.”

Original: El arte no es cosa de retórica ni aun de literatura, sino de personalidad. — Locating the essential source of art in the individual creator · Lecture, Los poetas de hoy (Spanish)

Manuel Machado