Able Quote by H. L. Mencken

“Nothing could be less conducive to reaching an art-work than critical remarks:it's always simply a matter of more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Everything cannot…

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Artists, in theory, should not be limited to their personal experience, culture, identity, and worldview. But they must also accept that the degree of…

— Sarah Weinman

“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.”

— Oscar Wilde

The sociability of artists is a paradoxical and precarious thing, and ceases the instant they begin their actual artistic work.

— Robin G. Collingwood

An artist's failures are as valuable as his successes: by misjudging one thing he conforms something else, even if at the time he does…

— Bridget Riley

“What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard…

— Tom Stoppard

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly…

— Madeleine L'Engle

“we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a…

— Rebecca West

“Artists are indeed unlikely to be good, goodness would silence them.”

— Iris Murdoch

“Any artist is insulted by the suggestion that art is merely a matter of recording reality, and knows that it is impossible to explain…

— Joan Lindsay

“Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all…

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Artists have no less talents than ever, their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble…

— George Santayana