Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent, which make up one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immutable. This transitory fugitive element, which is constantly changing, must not be despised or neglected. 693
Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language. 952
I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it. 599
Modern bodybuilding is ritual, religion, sport, art, and science, awash in Western chemistry and mathematics. Defying nature, it surpasses it. 648
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. 564
Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that’s it. No America, no jazz. I’ve seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with Africa. 672
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song. 665
I don’t think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today. But it’s certainly worth a try. 623
I don’t think there is such a thing as being too raunchy when it comes to the art form of burlesque. 2.51K
Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine. 647
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry. 629
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. 632
In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible. 692
In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper. 620
I love having my hands in the dirt. It is never a science and always an art. There are no rules. And if it comes down to me versus that weed I’m trying to pull out of the ground that doesn’t want to come out? I know I’ll win. 700
