Phidias Quotes

• There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.

  John F. Kennedy

  Art, Achievement, Presidential

  Response to letter sent by Theodate Johnson on September 13, 1960. "John F. Kennedy Quotations: The Arts", www.jfklibrary.org.

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• Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sculpture, Awful, Vain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1925*). “The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in One Volume”

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• Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Writing, Wrens

  1870 Society and Solitude,'Art'.

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• I envy those old Greek bathers, into whose hands were delivered Pericles, and Alcibiades, and the perfect models of Phidias. They had daily before their eyes the highest types of Beauty which the world has ever produced; for of all things that are beautiful, the human body is the crown.

  Bayard Taylor

  Hermoso, Ojo, Manos

  Bayard Taylor (1855). “The Lands of the Saracen: Or, Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily and Spain”, p.154

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• . . . what humanity most desperately needs is not the creation of new worlds but the recreation in terms of human comprehension of the world we have -- and it is for this reason that arts go on for generation to generation in spite of the fact that Phidias has already carved and Homer has already sung. The creation, we are informed, was accomplished in seven days with Sunday off, but the recreation will never be accomplished because it is always accomplished anew for each generation of living men.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Art, Sunday, Men

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• Pero es conveniente que el pasado sea oscuro; aunque la oscuridad no es tanto una cualidad del pasado como de la tradición. No es la distancia del tiempo, sino la distancia de las relaciones, lo que oscurece sus recuerdos. Lo que está cerca del corazón de esta generación sigue siendo hermoso y brillante. Grecia se extiende bella y soleada en inundaciones de luz, pues hay sol y luz diurna en su literatura y su arte. Homero no nos permite olvidar que el sol brilló, ni Fidias, ni el Partenón.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Distance, Lying

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• It seems as if nature, in regarding the geologic night behind her, when, in five or six millenniums, she had turned out five or six men, as Homer, Phidias, Menu, and Columbus, was no wise discontented with the result. These samples attested the virtue of the tree.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Night, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1571, Delphi Classics

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• Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called "silent poetry," and poetry "speaking painting." The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Writing, Law

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters”, p.48, London S. Low, Son & Marston 1870.

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• We have not chosen this time. We cannot help it if we are born as men of the early winter of full Civilization, instead of on the golden summit of a ripe Culture, in a Phidias or a Mozart time. Everything depends on our seeing our own position, our destiny, clearly, on our realizing that though we may lie to ourselves about it, we cannot evade it. He who does not acknowledge this in his heart, ceases to be counted among the men of his generation, and remains either a simpleton, a charlatan, or a pedant.

  Oswald Spengler

  Lying, Heart, Winter

  Oswald Spengler (1961). “Form and actuality”

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• For - to say a few words on technique - whereas the curved line was used predominantly for reasons of beauty, (Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens) it has been used more and more economically for reasons of truth (Millet, Monet, Paul Cézanne) until it will end as the straight line for reasons of Love. This will enable the art of the future to create an international form; a form understandable to all and vital enough to the expression of a general feeling of love in a monumental way. Such is the future.

  Theo van Doesburg

  Art, Expression, Feelings

  "Onafhankelijke bespiegelingen over de kunst" by Theo van Doesburg, De Avondpost Journal, January 23, 1916.

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• Se trata de una crítica superficial que definiría la poesía como confinada a producciones literarias en rima y ritmo métrico. El poema escrito es sólo poesía que habla, y la estatua, el cuadro y la composición musical son poesía que actúa. Milton y Goethe, en sus escritorios, no eran más verdaderos poetas que Fidias con su cincel, Rafael en su caballete, o el sordo Beethoven inclinado sobre su piano, inventando y produciendo acordes, que él mismo nunca podría esperar oír.

  John Ruskin

  Arte, Hablar, Piano

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