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All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

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Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

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Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions.""I hate th...more

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Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

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For the canons of good society are, or should be, the same as the canons of art. Form is absolutely essential to it. It should have the dignity of a c...more

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The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flo...more

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Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

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To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote ‘King Lea...more

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An educated person's ideas of Art are drwan naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never bee...more

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The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest. Poetry is an instance of what I mean. We have been abl...more

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The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.

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Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one's reaso...more

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Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.Vice and virtue are the artist’s materials for an art. From the point of view of form, th...more

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No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpa...more

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No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.