The study or contemplation of the masterpieces of art must serve only to render that of nature more fruitful, easier; he must not tend to throw it away, nature being that from which all perfections spring and derive their origin...
Nothing else can be higher than nature when it is beautiful, and no human effort can not only surpass it, but even equal it.
There are not two arts, there is only one: that which has eternal and natural beauty as its foundation. Those who look elsewhere are mistaken, and even in the most sinister way...
The serious study of the great philosophical truths which carry our minds up to the height of the laws which govern the moral and intellectual world is of the greatest use for the development and improvement of art. When art comes to understand and realize this great end of its mission, the high science of philosophy then feels the sweet satisfaction of seeing in the productions of art the eternal object of its deep meditations, the lofty contemplations of the intellect, the ardent passions of man, and all the desires and the struggles of the human soul...
This is the intimate link that unites science and art, whose goal is the discovery of truth... but science shows us the pure and unveiled truth, as the intellect conceives it, an abstraction difficult to penetrate, art presents it to us in beautiful images, that moves and impresses our senses.
Both idea and image exist together in the mind of the artist, but by the power of his particular talent he represents the idea in a sensible form...
Imagination is the most significant and precious faculty of the artist and he who does not have it cannot acquire it, no matter how great and long his powers are, it is a divine gift of nature.
The true purpose of art is to represent the ideal, which is the highest expression of beauty, the greatest perfection of beauty that exists in nature...
This ideal of beauty is the only source to which art must seek its aspirations.
It seems that only genius and beauty are eternal in this world. Laws perish, morals are erased, empires fall, even religions become invisible; but a verse of Homer or Racine, an outline of Phidias, a trait of Raphael are immortal.
Literature, with national roots, has a high social and moral mission, helping to reveal the higher qualities of humanity and at the same time working for its happiness.
Let your writing be like resin flowing from the tree: life overflowing.
There is no true great poet but he who increases the power of feeling of his race and through him, of mankind.
From Medusa's blood, of old, / was born in the wing of Pegasus. / Now, from your blood, multitude, / New poetry is born and takes voice. / We will not talk about the flowers, / that open and smile in the morning, / but about our turmoil and the life / that awaits us fearless singers.
We are not parents, but children of our works.
The writing profession is always a political occupation, because if you are not allowed or cannot, as a pen guild, to draft laws, you do not lack, if you have a vocation, the chance to cause the birth of customs.
Originality is spontaneous: ... nothing diminishes the value of a work more than the immeasurable ambition for originality displayed by its author.
Almost every good novel has at least something of its creator's psychology in it.
The revolutionary artist cannot sing hymns to beauty in the midst of a world of lust. He is equally sensitive to injustice or beauty; citizen of the world, brother of the oppressed, in equal measure, artist. The revolutionary artist has, on top of that, a sense of responsibility, to which his talent forces him, and of intelligence.
I think that in this fog of life, art is our only light and perhaps the only hope of universal perfection... I have always believed that art is able to change, in the course of the ages, the ugly face of the world. Of all the sentimental and spiritual values, which are the basis of the higher life, art is the one that includes more love, cleanliness, generosity.
When art succeeds in making people better, only then will we have the right to talk about art.
The purpose of my writing is to call the masses to battle.
There is no greater art than that which strives to enthrone justice on earth, to make people better, to wipe the tears of those who cry, to give bread to the hungry and shelter to those who sleep outside.
To refuse to believe in a human essence, not in the sense of something given, but of an ideal and a propensity, is to reject the very essence of art.
The universe of poetry is also a world within a world and tries to enhance the order and intrinsic necessity of things, to bring it before us, to our peace and restlessness.
Any artistic activity to the extent that it is a human activity, brings a segment of nature into the area of the human, prepares it through language for our perception and our own being.
A great work expresses a great consciousness, and consciousness is a report, a relationship with the world... the condition of the creation not only of the work of value, but also of the work existing in consciousness... the absolute necessity of anchoring in the real, in history, in the tension of the age.
Art apart from attitude is nonsense, and that is why art is always a manifestation of freedom because it presupposes a choice.
A society that does not have a literature focused on social reality, always following the new creator, empowering him, rejecting habit even, not to mention injustice, is threatened by sclerosis.
Art flourishes only where the nourishing hum of the soil is deep...it takes a great deal of history to produce literature...it takes a complete social mechanism to set the writer in motion.