Ancient Quote by Leonardo da Vinci

Some are so very studious of learning what was done by the ancients that they know not how to live with the moderns.

— William Penn

I want to modernize the ancient. I prefer to work with materials formed naturally over thousands of years.

— Mario Botta

Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin…

— Oliver Goldsmith

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the…

— Henry David Thoreau

“One makes a great error if one believes there are 'ancients.' Only now is antiquity starting to arise. It arises in the eyes and…

— Novalis

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations.

— Hans Hofmann

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.

— Egon Schiele

Any work that is born out of natural serendipity or reverts to simpler times is poignant for people - in any era.

— Cai Guo-Qiang

“Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action…

— Paul Valéry

“Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new…

— Kakuzō Okakura

“A lack of methodology in Upper Palaeolithic art research has led to confusion of priorities.”

— James David Lewis-Williams