“Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all Thy creatures, Especially to my worshipful brother sun, The which lights up the day, and through him dost Thou brightness give; And beautiful is he and radiant with splendor great;”
— Francis of Assisi, The Canticle of the Sun (trans. Paschal Robinson) (1225)
“The morning sea of silence broke into ripples of bird songs; and the flowers were all merry by the roadside; and the wealth of gold was scattered through the rift of the clouds while we busily went on our way and paid no heed.”
— Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (1912)
“To-day I went on foot to the Vatican and sat a long while in the Sistine Chapel. Here a miracle was worked. I felt--almost for the first time in my life--an artistic ecstasy for painting.”
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Modeste Tchaikovsky (trans. Rosa Newmarch, 1906) (1880)
“It awoke a spiritual ecstasy which was afterwards to bear fruit. By its help I penetrated into that world of artistic beauty where only great genius abides. It is due to Mozart that I devoted my life to music. He gave the first impulse to my efforts, and made me love it above all else in the world.”
— Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Life and Letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, ed. Modeste Tchaikovsky (trans. Rosa Newmarch, 1906) (1878)
“Ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to their degree”
— John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume 1 (1843)
“But the greatest mission which the photoplay may have in our community is that of esthetic cultivation. No art reaches a larger audience daily, no esthetic influence finds spectators in a more receptive frame of mind.”
— Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916)
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
— Anonymous (Hebrew Psalmist), The Book of Psalms (King James Version) (1611)
“Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight.”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1818)
“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not”
— John Keats, Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (ed. Sidney Colvin) (1817)
“Reason also utters the decision that man shall only play with beauty, and he shall only play with beauty.”
— Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
“The people still has to learn the great difference between true enjoyment and fleeting pleasure, between real beauty and the mere tickling of the senses.”
— Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916)
“We recognized that art is a way to overcome nature and to create out of the chaotic material of the world something entirely new, entirely unreal, which embodies perfect unity and harmony.”
— Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (1916)
Every quote in this collection was verified
against its original public-domain source — the letter, journal, poem or treatise it
truly comes from. No internet folklore, no misattributions.
Start free to bring these voices into your daily practice.