Ananda Coomaraswamy

No creature can attain a higher grade of nature without ceasing to exist.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

All that is best for us comes of itself into our hands-but if we strive to overtake it, it perpetually eludes us.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

Becoming is not a contradiction of being but the epiphany of being.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

Industry without art is brutality.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job,…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

“There is then no sacred or profane, spiritual or sensual, but everything that lives is pure and void.”

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

Beauty is the attractive power of perfection.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

“Those who think of their house as only a ‘machine to live in’ should judge their point of view by that Neolithic…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

From one point of view becoming is a humiliation, and from another a royal procession.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

Man's activity consists in either a making or doing. Both of these aspects of the active life depend for their correction upon…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

The vocation, whether it be that of the farmer or the architect, is a function; the exercise of this function as regards…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man is a special kind of artist.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

The most awkward means are adequate to the communication of authentic experience, and the finest words no compensation for lack of it.…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

The man incapable of contemplation cannot be an artist, but only a skillful workman.

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

We have come to think of art and work as incompatible, or at least independent categories and have for the first time…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy

It is the natural instinct of a child to work from within outwards; "First I think, and then I draw my think."…

— Ananda Coomaraswamy