The mark of all good art is not that the thing is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the tender, appealing vitality of the workman’s heart and head.
Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.
Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.
People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.
Only the shallow know themselves.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are, and will be what they will be.
Nothing, indeed, is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty: he is constantly led by it either into weak prettiness or lifeless abstraction: whereas to touch the ideal at all you must not strip it of vitality.
No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.
No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.