W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Art | Character | Culture | Money | Talking | Writing | Art |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Life is a romantic business. It is painting a picture, not doing a sum; but you have to make the romance, and it will come to the question how much fire you have in your belly.

Business | Character | Life | Life | Question | Romance | Will |

Samuel Butler

A man's work whether in music, painting or literature is always a portrait of himself.

Literature | Man | Music | Wisdom | Work |

Samuel Butler

Communication of all kinds is like painting - a compromise with impossibilities.

Wisdom |

Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas

In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

Means | Wisdom |

Edna Ferber

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.

Death | Defeat | Life | Life | Love | Wisdom | Writing |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Good | Judgment | Sound | Wisdom | Writing |

Wright Morris

When writing is good, everything is symbolic, but symbolic writing is seldom good.

Good | Wisdom | Writing |

Simonides, aka Simonedes of Ceos NULL

Painting is silent poetry, poetry painting that speaks.

Poetry | Wisdom |

Howard Sparks

The art of our era is not art, but technology. Today Rembrandt is painting automobiles; Shakespeare is writing research reports.

Art | Era | Research | Technology | Wisdom | Writing | Art |

Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne

Both music and painting add a spirit to devotion, and elevate the ardor.

Devotion | Music | Spirit | Wisdom |

E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is.

Beauty | Free press | Man | Order | Wisdom | Writing | Beauty |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at that] given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth.

Present | Question | Time | Truth | Writing | Think |

Paul Gardner

A painting is never finished. It simply stops in interesting places.

Allan J Hamilton

Assign someone to be your guardian angel. Give someone in your family, a member who’s smart and attentive, the assignment of writing down and recording everything that’s don’t to and for you… the largest number of adverse events, by far, is caused by medication errors.

Events | Family | Writing |

James M. Gillis

Art is revelation. If painting shows only what is there, it is not art. Art like fine music or high literature must carry the beholder beyond this world and all that appears in it, transport him to the shores of the eternal world and enable him to see and hear the things not given to the tongue of man to utter.

Art | Eternal | Literature | Man | Music | Revelation | World | Art |

Delmore Schwartz

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Need | Writing |