American art, like the American language and American education, was as far as possible sexless.

-Adams, Henry Brooks
  The Education of Henry  Adams, ch.25,'The Dynamo and the Virgin'.

There is sometimes a greater judgement shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them; and†there ismore beauty inthe works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.592,10 Sep.

I am really persuaded that if we were to inquire of all the Cities which†have fallen by Siege into the Power of new Masters, who it was that subjected and overcame them, they would tell you, the Architect; and that they were strong enough to have despised the armed Enemy, but not to withstand the Shocks of the Engines, the Violence of the Machines and the Force of other Instruments of War with whichthe Architect, distressed, demolished and ruinated them.On the contrary, they would inform you that their greatest Defense lay in the Art and Assistance of the Architect.

-Alberti, Leon Battista
^2  Architecttura (translated by James Leoni,1755).

Life does not imitate art. It imitates bad television.

-Allen,Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg
  In The Guardian, 31 Dec.

Art comes to you proposing to give nothing but the 24 highest quality to your moments as they pass.

-Anonymous
Inscription on wall of entrance gallery at Dallas' Lloyd Paxton Art and  Antiques. Quoted in  Architectural Digest, May1986.

   Art cannot hold its breath too long without dying.

-Antheil, George
  Bad Boy of Music.

La ge¤  ome¤  trie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est a'   l'art de l'e¤  crivain. Geometry is to sculpture what grammar is to the art of the writer.

-Kostrowitzki
  Les Peintres cubistes; Me¤  ditations esthe¤  tiques,'Sur la peinture, 3'.

L'art, de plus en plus, aura une patrie. Art, more and more, will have a country.

-Kostrowitzki
  'L'Esprit nouveau et les po e' tes', Mercure de France.

Ars autem deficit ab operatione naturae. Art pales when compared to the workings of nature.

-Aquinas, StThomas
c.1272  Summa Theologia, bk. 3, question 66, article 4.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly everyaction and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

-Aristotle
Nicomachean Ethics, bk.1, ch.1,1093 (translated by Sir David Ross).

I dread this like the dentist, rather more so: To me Art's subject is the human clay, And landscape but a background to a torso; All Ce¤ z anne's apples I would give away For one small Goya or a Daumier.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'Letter to Byron', pt.3, stanza 20, collected in Poems, Essays, Dramatic Writings1927^1939 (1977).

Film art has a greater influence on the minds of the general public than any other art.

-Balazs, Bela originally Hubert Bauer
  Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New Art (translated by Edith Bone).

L'amour n'est pas seulement un sentiment, il est un art aussi. Love is not only a feeling; it is also an art.

-Balzac, Honore¤   de
La Recherche de l'absolu.

Do not imagine that Art is something which is designed to give gentle uplift and self-confidence. Art is not a brassie'  re. At least, not in the English sense.But do not forget that brassie'  re is the French for life-jacket.

-Barnes,Julian Patrick
  Flaubert's Parrot, ch.10.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

-Barzun,Jacques
  In Newsweek, 5 Dec.

If photography is allowed to stand in forart in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thankstothenatural support it will find inthestupidityof themultitude.It must return toits real task, which isto be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  'Salon of1859', section 2, in Curiosite¤  s Esthe¤  tiques (1868).

Woebetidethemanwhogoestoantiquity for thestudyof anything other than ideal art, logic and general method!

-Baudelaire, Charles
c.1860  Letter, published in The Painter of Modern Life (1863).

Le mal se fait sans effort, naturellement, par fatalite¤  ; le bien est toujours le produit d'un art. Evil is done without effort, naturally, it's destiny; good is always a product of art.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  Le Spleen de Paris,'Le Peintre de la vie moderne', pt.11.

L'art moderne a une tendance essentiellement de¤  moniaque. Modern art tends towards the demonic.

-Baudelaire, Charles
  L'Art romantique.

Early in life,Duveen†noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation.

-Behrman, S(amuel) N(athaniel)
  Duveen, ch.1.  Joseph Duveen was a highly successful US art dealer.