Slow Living and Quotes About Art (A Baker's Dozen)

It's kind of funny how the most disorganized people seem to be the ones who buy the most books about dealing with clutter and getting organized. I've bought a few myself, and even when we are told what to do it's not always so easy.

In the same way the "Slow Living" movement seems to be attracting increasing numbers of adherents reading increasing numbers of books on this theme. Why? Because we're all too conscious of the wearisomeness created by our increasingly fast-paced lives. 

So it is that I began listening to the audio book Slow Living this week. In the intro our author shared several stories about his own excessively manic life, and the "aha!" moment that awakened him to his need for a life change. 

All good so far. But then, he went too far. He stated that one of the bad things fast-living people do is adopt lifestyles of multi-tasking. He said we should listen to this audiobook not while driving our car, but while doing nothing else. Naturally I was driving my car when he said this, as I am eating breakfast while I write this. Multi-tasking is a way of life. Tonight I will balance the checkbook while watching a movie. And a minute after he said that I ejected the tape and began listening to Grover Gardner narrating The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume Two. I'll slow down some day. I promise.

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A Dozen Quotes On Art

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” ― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

 “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” ― Vincent van Gogh

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” ― Pablo Picasso

“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Creativity takes courage. ” ― Henri Matisse

“One eye sees, the other feels.” ― Paul Klee

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.” ― Alice Walker

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” ― Pablo Picasso

“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” ― Banksy

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ― Émile Zola

“Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.” ― Pope John Paul II

“In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.” ― Tom Robbins

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” ― George Bernard Shaw

Do you have a favorite quote about art? I'd like to hear it.