Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighters honor.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

Art and science create a balance to material life and enlarge the world of living experience. Art leads to a more profound concept of life, because art itself is a profound expression of feeling.

If you would have me weep, you must first of all feel grief yourself.

He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.

Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.