A Quote by Johann Kaspar Lavater

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertion of human nature; and what nature will he honour who honours not the human?

Johann Kaspar Lavater

Quote Topics

Art Art Is Enemy Exertion Highest Honour Honours Human Human Nature Nature Nothing Sagacity Will

Quote Author

Johann Kaspar Lavater
German - Theologian
November 15, 1741 - January 2, 1801

Art is a product of nature in general, in the particular form of human nature.

Anton Webern

I like nature but not its substitutes... Mondrian opposed art to nature saying that art is artificial and nature is natural. I do not share this opinion... Art's origins are natural.

Hans Arp

Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nat, are unconscious of the harmony of creation.

Thomas Cole

Understanding human nature must be the basis of any real improvement in human life. Science has done wonders in mastering the laws of the physical world, but our own nature is much less understood, as yet, than the nature of stars and electrons. When science learns to understand human nature, it will be able to bring a happiness into our lives which machines and the physical sciences have failed to create.

Bertrand Russell

Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.

Bruce Lee

And when you, O human, will return to Nature, that day your eyes will open, you will stare straight into the eyes of Nature and in its mirror you will see your image. You will knowthat when you hid from Nature, you hid from yourselfWe who have been turned away from Nature - if we desire life, we must establish a new relationship with Nature.

A. D. Gordon

Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.

Harrison Ford

A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.

Paul Gauguin

Art is art, nature is nature, you cannot improve upon it.... Pictures should be inspired by nature, but made in the soul of the artist. It is the soul of the individual that counts.

Emily Carr

What art should be about,' they will say, 'is revealing exquisite and resonant truths about the human condition.' Well, to be honest - no, it shouldn’t. I mean, it can occasionally, if it wants to; but really, how many penetrating insights to human nature do you need in one lifetime? Two? Three? Once you’ve realised that no one else has a clue what they’re doing, either, and that love can be totally pointless, any further insights into human nature just start getting depressing really.

Caitlin Moran

In the wildest nature, there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and a sort of anticipation of the last result,but a greater refinement already than is ever attained by man.... Nature is prepared to welcome into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in his work.

Henry David Thoreau

I think that sexuality is the part of human beings that is closest to nature. And nature is dangerous somehow, yes, if you put nature against civilisation, nature is definitely a threat.

Lars von Trier

Art does not lie in copying nature.- Nature furnishes the material by means of which is to express a beauty still unexpressed in nature.-The artist beholds in nature more than she herself is conscious of.

Henry James

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.