A Quote by Peter O'Toole

Anything an artist does is to show ourselves as we really are, which is a complex thing. I don't think that one work of Philosophy or Art, or Letters, or Acting, or Middle Playing, or Tightrope Walking, or Flea Circuses has made mankind better, if by better you mean kinder, wiser, more tolerant of each other. One thing self knowledge. Knoticayton: know thyself.

Peter O'Toole

Quote Topics

Acting Anything Art Artist Better Complex Does Each Flea Kinder Know Know Thyself Knowledge Letters Made Mankind Mean Middle More One Thing Other Ourselves Philosophy Playing Really Self Self Knowledge Show Thing Think Thyself Tightrope Tolerant Walking Which Wiser Work

Quote Author

Peter O'Toole
Irish - Actor
August 2, 1932 - December 14, 2013

Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made.

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.

Willa Cather

I think a good painting or a good work of art does many things it wants, I mean, maybe 15 or 20 or 100. One of the things a painting does is to make the room look better. It improves the wall that it's on. Which is much harder than it looks. And that's a good thing. And if one engages with a painting on that level, that's fine, that's great. After some time, familiarity, the other things that a painting does, the other layers, they just start to make themselves felt.

David Salle

Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.

Rajneesh

If we took just 5 minutes to recognize each other's beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That's not hard. It's really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it's not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves. I know many of you have struggled with this. I draw upon your strength and your support, and have, in ways you will never know.

Ellen Page

How often does the tightrope walker balance when walking across the tightrope? All the time! It is the same thing if you really want to have a successful career, and you want to have a happy home life. It is a matter of balance.

Brian Tracy

Some people as a result of adversity are sadder, wiser, kinder, more human. Most of us are better, though, when things go better.

Malcolm Forbes

My great hope for us as young women is to start being kinder to ourselves so that we can be kinder to each other. To stop shaming ourselves and other people for things we don't know the full story on - whether someone is too fat, too skinny, too short, too tall, too loud, too quiet, too anything. There's a sense that we're all ‘too’ something, and we're all not enough.

Emma Stone

It is not enough to do, one must also become. I wish to be wiser, stronger, better. This--" I held out my hands "--this thing that is me is incomplete. It is only the raw material with which I have to work. I want to make it better than I received it.

Louis L'Amour

I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.

Paul Walker

I don't like that whole "art should challenge you" thing. Because I don't feel like art actually does challenge you. I was a semiotics major at Brown, and there's this idea that stories are better, books are better, and movies are better if they cocked you off your axis and you were completely disoriented and you'd really have to rethink everything.

Ira Glass

I think it's just a chemistry thing, feeling each other out. The more you play with each other, the better it's going to be.

Ezekiel Elliott

In the evolution of knowledge-mistaken and unnecessary beliefs are forced out and supplanted by truer and more necessary knowledge. So too in the evolution of feelings, which takes place by means of art. Lower feelings-less kind and less needed for the good of humanity-are forced out and replaced by kinder feelings which better serve us individually and collectively. This is the purpose of art.

Leo Tolstoy

I would imagine, a very large percentage of people who get something for art and they do something else, and they have some excess resources. And they trade those resources with artists whose work makes them feel good, or feel better, or question. And the artist, if they're smart, they use it to buy the most expensive thing in the world: time to make more. The more that come, the better it is for these people, their children, the people they care about, fills the society with a real constant thing.

Lawrence Weiner

And I do think that good art - the art that tends to last - is that art that hits human beings on several different levels at once because everybody's different. Some people approach art through their emotions, others through their head, and the art that can appeal to all of those levels is more likely to reach more people. Having more people see the work doesn't necessarily mean better art but it stands a better chance of lasting.