Art and Literature Quotes

"In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man." ~ Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis "Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets . . . " ~ New Grub Street by George Gissing There is no royal road to learning; no short cut to the acquirement of any art. ~ Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself. ~ The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler "Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech: that your native language is the language of Shakespeare and Milton and The Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon." ~ Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw "Life isn't long enough for love and art." ~ The Moon and Sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham "She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her `Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir." ~ The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance. ~ Ulysses by James Joyce "The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!" ~ The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde "Art," he continued, with a wave of the hand, "is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life." ~ Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham