Art × Virtue

Art and Virtue

Browse 24 quotations catalogued under art with "virtue" in the text or topic label.

24 quotes

This collection contains 24 quotations filed under Art with "virtue" in the quote text or topic label. These keyword matches offer a starting point for exploring Art and Virtue; they do not by themselves establish a shared argument or a historical connection between the authors.

The authors represented include David Hume, Edmund Burke, Caspar David Friedrich, Lionel Trilling, and others. Read each quotation in its own context rather than assuming that these authors share a position.

One matching quotation reads: "Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- Were one to go ro…" The full quotation appears below.

Another matching quotation reads: "All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter." Compare the wording and surrounding context to decide how each passage relates to your question.

Use the quotation links to explore individual entries and the author links to visit their profiles on QuoteLineage. For broader reading beyond these keyword matches, explore all Art quotes or the concept page for Virtue.

24 Quotes on Art and Virtue

"Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- Were one to go round the world with an intention of giving a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the merits and the demerits of most men and women scarcely amount to the value of either."

"All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter."

— Edmund Burke

"What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity.. .However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues."

— Caspar David Friedrich

"If one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but from the present bourgeoisie itself."

— Lionel Trilling

"has indeed become a new profession and quite a large number of people now make their livelihood by such work. At the same time the State has expanded its social services beyond all recognition within the space of a single generation and a large part of the produce of taxation is now devoted to every form of social amelioration... I should like to see us less concerned with palliation and more concerned with providing the means whereby our people by self-help, that demoded Victorian virtue, should be able to work out their own salvation, even if in fear and trembling."

— Hugh Macmillan

"Everyone knew that democracy-direct rule by all the people-required such spartan, self-denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race."

— Bernard Bailyn

"If you want to follow The Way of Men, if you want to advance a return to honor and manly virtue, if you want to steel yourself against an uncertain future—start a gang."

— Jack Donovan

"He saw that their distinctive virtue lay in their finitude, their minute particularity, their tortured balance between dullness and lucidity; and that to save them from these would be to annihilate them."

— Olaf Stapledon

"Linear relationships can be captured with a straight line on a graph. Linear relationships are easy to think about....Linear equations are solvable... Linear systems have an important modular virtue: you can take them apart, and put them together again — the pieces add up."

— James Gleick

"If we exiled our sins, our virtues would get lonely without their old sparring partners."

— Henry S. Haskins

"There's absolutely no difference between the greatest painting ever made and a joke. It's just something someone invented that someone else likes! That's art. And it has no reason to exist, except its own virtue."

— Jerry Seinfeld

"Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue."

— Sinclair Lewis

"I saw verily that the inward part is master and sovereign to the outward, and doth not charge itself with, nor take heed to, the will of that: but all the intent and will is set to be oned unto our Lord Jesus. That the outward part should draw the inward to assent was not shewed to me; but that the inward draweth the outward by grace, and both shall be oned in bliss without end, by the virtue of Christ, — this was shewed."

— Julian of Norwich

"When Heracles was quite a young man and was nearly of the age at which you yourselves are now, while he was deliberating which of the two roads he should take, the one leading through toils to virtue, or the easiest, two women approached him, and these were Virtue and Vice. Now at once, although they were silent, the difference between them was evident from their appearance. For the one had been decked out for beauty through the art of toiletry, and was overflowing with voluptuousness, and she was leading a whole swarm of pleasures in her train; now these things she displayed, and promising still more than these she tried to draw Heracles to her. But the other was withered and squalid, and had an intense look, and spoke quite differently; for she promised nothing dissolute or pleasant, but countless sweating toils and labours and dangers through every land and sea. But the prize to be won by these was to become a god, as the narrative of Prodicus expressed it; and it was this second woman that Heracles in the end followed."

— Basil of Caesarea

"An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have clear conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us: in this case he has imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear Vision no skill can avail. Imperfect Vision necessitates imperfect representation; words take the place of ideas."

— George Henry Lewes

"I have myself taken a hand in propagating the virtues of workers’ partnership in the management and I strove hard to set up Joint Management Councils in as many establishments as possible both in the private and public sectors."

— Gulzarilal Nanda

"Art is necessary in order that man should be able to recognize and change the world. But art is also necessary by virtue of the magic inherent in it."

— Ernst Fischer (writer)

"A great party is not to be brought down because of a scandal by a woman of easy virtue and a proved liar."

— Quintin Hogg

"Neither economic liberalism nor Keynesianism can conceptualise vocation, virtue or labour value as economic categories, neither can give a primary economic value to intermediate institutions, whether they be the corporate governance of a firm, vocational colleges, regional banks or supporter owned football clubs, they can only conceptualise the state or the market and all forms of particular association are viewed as at best “cultural” or at worst “obstructive”. They can give no conceptual status to place, to the specificity of place and the necessity of institutions in generating virtue and value within it."

— Maurice Glasman

"Where I can see an escape from my particular doom spiral is in style as an alternative ideal to beauty. You can be stylish at any age. You can be stylish whether you pass or not. Style is a way of cultivating a personal aesthetic that you have complete control over. It's like art in that originality is a virtue. Style is an individual aesthetic, unlike the collective aesthetic of beauty standards."

— Natalie Wynn

"Either... the moving intelligences of the planets are weakest in those that are farthest from the sun, or... there is one moving intelligence in the sun, the common center, forcing them all round, but those most violently which are nearest, and that it languishes in some sort and grows weaker at the most distant, because of the remoteness and the attenuation of the virtue."

— Johannes Kepler

"Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is not, as Kant was later to think, to act against inclination; it is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues."

— Alasdair MacIntyre

"Fame in arms or art, however conspicuous, is naught, unless bottomed in virtue."

— Henry Lee III

"Acquire the art of detachment, the virtue of method, and the quality of thoroughness, but above all the grace of humility."

— William Osler

Key thinkers on this theme

David Hume· Philosophy Edmund Burke· Philosophy Caspar David Friedrich· Art Lionel Trilling· Literature Hugh Macmillan· Politics

Related ideas in Art

All Art quotes Explore the idea of Virtue