No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling... The desire to grasp and be united with another hu….

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well..

Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite speci….

The nude gains its enduring value from the fact that it reconciles several contrary states. It takes the most sensual and immediately interesting obj….

Devotion to the facts will always give the pleasures of recognition; adherence to the rules of design, the pleasures of order and certainty..

Lives devoted to Beauty seldom end well..

Heroes do not easily tolerate the company of other heroes..

I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos..

Just as a classical dancer repeats the same movements again and again, in order to achieve a greater perfection of line and balance, so Degas repeats….

Over and above the political, economic, sociological, and international implications of racial prejudices, their major significance is that they plac….

The great artist takes what he needs..

This became Delacroix 's theme: that the achievements of the spirit all that a great library contained were the result of a state of society so delic….

In time of war all countries behave equally badly, because the power of action is handed over to stupid and obstinate men..

Ruthless, greedy, tyrannical, disreputable... they have had one principle worth all the rest, the principle of delight!.

Ruskin's much-derided moral theory of art was part of an attempt to show that this human activity, which we value so highly, engaged the whole of hum….

However much the various phases of the French Revolution may have modelled themselves on Roman history the early phase on Republican virtue, the late….

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it ….

The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a phot….

The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people..

Great works of art can be produced in barbarous societies - in fact the very narrowness of primitive society gives their ornamental art a peculiar co….

A lot of people you think you know you don't know until you find out you don't know then it may be too late to know..