The Aim of Art

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

“If a writer, despite his natural gifts, gives up writing because no one will publish him, then he is no writer. The artist is distinguished by his urge to create, which by very definition is a concomitant of talent.”

“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”

“Art should be there to remind man that he is a spiritual being, that he is part of an infinitely larger spirit to which he will return in the end. If he’s interested in these questions, if he simply asks himself these questions, he’s already saved spiritually. It’s not the answer that’s important. I know that from the moment man begins asking the questions he will be unable to live as he has before.”

“The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

“If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.”

“Art affirms all that is best in man—hope, faith, love, beauty, prayer…What he dreams of and what he hopes for…What is art?…Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life — love and sacrifice.”

All quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

Don’t Hide The Madness

“The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of solitude,
under the burden of dissatisfaction,
the weight we carry is love.”

“I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, and alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.”

“I have no other possessions of value but my soul.”

“Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you’re twice as aware of the rug.”

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world.”

“What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?”

“I have been wrathful all my life, angry against my father and all others. My wrath must end. All my images now are of heaven.”

“Our heads are round so thought can change direction”

“We’re all golden sunflowers inside.”

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening.”

All quotes & poems by Allen Ginsberg

Nudges From Aldous & Oscar

“Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.”

“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”

“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”

“If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.”

Written quotes by Aldous Huxley, tattooed quote by Oscar Wilde.

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Stop a Moment

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

“I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.”

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

“Governments not only are not necessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions.”

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important– Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.”

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.”

“Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.”

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

“I think… if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.”

“Life could be limitless joy, if we would only take it for what it is, in the way it is given to us.”

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”

“The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

All quotes by Leo Tolstoy

The Only Good Fight

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

“I used to live on one candy bar a day – it cost a nickel. I always remember the candy bar was called Payday. That was my payday. And that candy bar tasted so good, at night I would take one bite, and it was so beautiful.”

“Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, ‘Don’t try.’ That fits the writing, too. I don’t try; I just type.”

“We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.”

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

“You have to die a few times before you can really live.”

“Find what you love and let it kill you.”

“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”

All quotes by Charles Bukowski

Wallace Stevens: Priest of the Invisible

“There is no wing like meaning.”

“There is nothing in life except what one thinks of it.”

“It is the unknown that excites the ardor of scholars, who, in the known alone, would shrivel up with boredom.

“The poet is the priest of the invisible.”

“The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.”

“Of the Surface of Things In my room, the world is beyond my understanding; But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four Hills and a cloud.”

“The way through the world is more difficult to find than the way beyond it.”

“Reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.”

“A change of style is a change of meaning.”

They said, “You have a blue guitar You do not play things as they are”. The man replied,”things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar”.

“It is never the thing but the vision of the thing.”
“Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams And our desires.”

“We say God and the imagination are one… How high that highest candle lights the dark.”

“The fire burns as the novel taught it how.”

All quotes by Wallace Stevens

Artwork by David Hockney

To Give Light

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”

“Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.”

“Human potential at its best is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.”

“What is to give light must endure burning.”

All quotes by Viktor Frankl
Artwork by Igor Morski

To Think Beyond

“The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground.”

“Becoming ‘awake’ involves seeing our confusion more clearly.”

“There is no need to struggle to be free; the absence of struggle is in itself freedom.”

“It’s easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.”

“The idea is not to regard the spiritual path as something very luxurious and pleasurable, but to see it as just facing the facts of life.”

“We must try to think beyond our homes, beyond the fire burning in the fireplace, beyond sending our children to school or getting to work in the morning. We must try to think how we can help this world. If we don’t help, nobody will. It is our turn to help the world.”

All quotes by Chögyam Trungpa