In no other sphere is the word abused as much as it is in the evaluation of works of art—especially false art.
We are only wholly satisfied by our impression of a work of art when it leaves behind something that, despite applying all our mental effort, we cannot fully clarify.
— Schopenhauer
Art influences people’s souls in a way that makes the mysterious obvious, the vague clear, the difficult easy, the accidental necessary. A true artist always simplifies.
— After Amiel
If the whole world, as representation, is only an appearance, then art is a clarification of this appearance, a camera obscura that shows us a clearer view of objects, helping us to better observe and perceive them. Art is a spectacle within a spectacle, a scene within a scene, like in Hamlet.
— Schopenhauer
The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon. To him, the refractory world is ductile and flexible; he invests dust and stones with humanity, and makes them the words of the Reason.
— Emerson
Remember that nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship; nor nobly, which is done in pride.
— John Ruskin
The sciences and the arts can only be useful to ordinary people when indiduals living among the people and like the people, without declaring any rights, offer them their scientific and artistic services, which the ordinary people would be free to accept or reject.
There are two unquestionable signs of true science and true art: the first is internal, which is that the servant of science or art fulfills his calling selflessly and not for profit; the second is external, which is that everyone can understand his work.
Science is as tightly connected to art as the lungs are to the heart, so that if one organ is corrupted, the other cannot work properly.
True science studies and introduces into people’s consciousness those truths of knowledge that the people of a particular time and society consider most important. Art translates these truths from the sphere of knowledge into the sphere of feeling.
Although artistic pursuits are not as elevated an activity as the people who are engaged in them generally like to think, this work is good and useful if it brings people together and evokes good feelings in them; but to pursue art that is approved by the wealthy classes of our world—art that divides people and evokes bad feelings in them—is work that is not just useless, but harmful.
