Aesthetic Quotes

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

No student of history can fail to see the moral interest of the Middle Ages, any more than an artist can fail to see their aesthetic interest.

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war.

I live an artistic double life: one of classical realism and the other of aesthetic exploration.

Even the nonreligious may exercise aesthetic judgment in matters of religion, and indeed our age has given the unbelieving a sophisticated taste in religious literature.

From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of the mass complex.

In the end, I believe that the most important influence on my aesthetic has been the photographs I have taken.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

I have no particular interest in antiquities or antiques, but I like things to meet a certain aesthetic.

Your ethnic or sexual identity, what region of the country you're from, what your class is - those aspects of your identity are not the same as your aesthetic identity.

The filmmakers I really love are the ones that let me look through their eyes for a while. They have an aesthetic and social point of view.

Mars is not an aesthetic God.

Kitsch may be conveniently defined as a specifically aesthetic form of lying.

My fascination for studies proved highly beneficial, it assisted the development of my aesthetic understanding of chess, and improved my endgame play.

Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical.

One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury

I think if you are writing an instrumental you are dealing with more of an aesthetic in a sense but a lyric is more of a putting yourself on the line and a much more expensive exercise.

In aesthetic theory it might be extremely difficult, if not quite impracticable, to draw a line between the canon of classicism, or regard for the archaic, and the canon of beauty.

No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.

Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical

I love going somewhere like Japan where you can't understand a word of the advertising - you just see it for its aesthetic beauty, without feeling that you're being sold something.

Nature supplies the game of chess with its implements; science with its system; art with its aesthetic arrangement of its problems; and God endows it with its blessed power of making people happy.

They who seek religion for culture's sake are aesthetic, not religious, and will never gain that grace which religion adds to culture, because they never can have the religion.

To respect the cat is the beginning of the aesthetic sense.

As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

It's so important what you're doing in your life. It's tremendously important to the work, and no aesthetic theories take that into account.

Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection.

Every human body has its optimum weight and contour, which only health and efficiency can establish. Whenever we treat women's bodies as aesthetic objects without function we deform them.

Tomes of aesthetic criticism hang on a few moments of real delight and intuition.

[T]he more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.

There are few humanities that could surpass in discipline, in beauty, in emotional and aesthetic satisfaction, those humanities which are called mathematics, and the natural sciences.

Styles may change, details may come and go, but the broad demands of aesthetic judgement are permanent.

The main reason why men and women make different aesthetic judgments is the fact that the latter, generally incapable of abstraction, only admire what meets their complete approval.

To be civilized is to be potentially master of all possible ideas, and that means that one has got beyond being shocked, although one preserves one's own moral aesthetic preferences.

It's odd that there is a high level of appreciation of nature. There is the aesthetic side that really loves nature and beauty.

I think I have a basic sound aesthetic that is in most of what I do

I think I just have a natural operatic aesthetic. I can't help it.

I'm intrigued with figuring out the places [where] the horrible and the beautiful meet - that aesthetic fascinates me.

Qualities I sought in a scientific theory were naturalness, inner perfection and logical simplicity from an aesthetic approach.

I like going to Church for aesthetic reasons, rather than spiritual ones.

Scientific understanding is often beautiful, a profoundly aesthetic experience which gives pleasure not unlike the reading of a great poem.

Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad.

A rich poet from Harvard has no sense in his mind, except the aesthetic.

We can tolerate great diversity in our aesthetic beliefs, but we can't tolerate much diversity in our moral beliefs.

Photography's central sense of purpose and aesthetic: the precise and lucid description of significant fact.

I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.