Good Aesthetics Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps Aristotle's most widely-read work is his esoteric treatise on aesthetics, the Poetics. According to his analysis of tragic poetry (a section on comedy was either lost or never completed), the theatrical audience experiences katharsis ("purgation") of the heightened emotions of pity and fear as the tragic hero, a basically good but flawed aristocrat, is brought down by his own "error of judgment. — The New York Times

If the sphere of paradox-religion is abolished, or explained away in aesthetics, an Apostle becomes neither more nor less than a genius, and then
good night, Christianity! Esprit and the Spirit, revelation and originality, a call from God and genius, all end by meaning more or less the same thing. — Soren Kierkegaard

What is the use of aesthetics if they can neither teach how to produce beauty nor how to appreciate it in good taste? It exists because it behooves rational human beings to provide reasons for their actions and assessments. Even if aesthetics are not the mathematics of beauty, they are the proof of the calculation. — Franz Grillparzer

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness. — Clarice Lispector

Yes, but more than being a designer, I'm more of a stylist, because I don't sew and I don't sketch, but I'm good at putting things together, choosing things that are chic and glossing over the aesthetics of things. — Dita Von Teese

God's pleasure
the beauty creation possesses in his regard
underlies the distinct being of creation, and so beauty is the first and truest word concerning all that appears within being; beauty is the showing of what is; God looked upon what he had wrought and saw that it was good. — David Bentley Hart

Don't talk to me about aesthetics or tradition. Talk to me about what sells and what's good right now. And what the American people like is to think the underdog still has a chance. — George Steinbrenner

Everything good is good because of the love it contains. — John K. Brown

All of that art-for-art's-sake stuff is BS," she declares. "What are these people talking about? Are you really telling me that Shakespeare and Aeschylus weren't writing about kings? All good art is political! There is none that isn't. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, 'We love the status quo.' We've just dirtied the word 'politics,' made it sound like it's unpatriotic or something." Morrison laughs derisively. "That all started in the period of state art, when you had the communists and fascists running around doing this poster stuff, and the reaction was 'No, no, no; there's only aesthetics.' My point is that is has to be both: beautiful and political at the same time. I'm not interested in art that is not in the world. And it's not just the narrative, it's not just the story; it's the language and the structure and what's going on behind it. Anybody can make up a story. — Toni Morrison

What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Not that this was our intention, but you know how it is with writing, one word often brings along another in its train simply because they sound good together, even if this means sacrificing respect for levity and ethics for aesthetics, if such solemn concepts are not out of place in a discourse such as this, and often to no one's advantage either. It is in this and other ways, almost without our realizing it, that we make so many enemies in life. — Jose Saramago

Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good! Assuming you can write clear English (or Norwegian) sentences, give up all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone.
To write a poem you have to have a streak of arrogance ( ... ) when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, good sense, or narrative development, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection. — Richard Hugo

It's the artist's duty to have an artist's life, somehow to obtain time and freedom and then to muster the desire and discipline to make good work out of the life, whether that goodness is in the world's aesthetics, its radicalism, its candor, its singularity, or its universality. — Stephanie Mills

At last everything was satisfactorily arranged, and I could not help admiring the setting: these mingled touches betrayed on a small scale the inspiration of a poet, the research of a scientist, the good taste of an artist, the gourmet's fondness for good food, and the love of flowers, which concealed in their delicate shadows a hint of the love of women — August Strindberg

Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. It is superseded by science, deleted by philosophy and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It is drowned in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are simply drowned in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than for the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party, the one who somehow caused it all, is the victim, and not the perpetrator of the crime. — Robert Fitch

Buildings designed with careful attention to aesthetics arouse and enlighten their occupants and that promotes their good health. — Robert Evans

She had been crying after a routine row with her mother and, as had happened on former occasions, had not wished me to see her swollen eyes: she had one of those tender complexions that after a good cry get all blurred and inflamed, and morbidly alluring. I regretted keenly her mistake about my private aesthetics, for I simply love that tinge of Botticellian pink [3], that raw rose about the lips, those wet, matted eyelashes; and, naturally, her bashful whim deprived me of many opportunities of specious consolation. — Vladimir Nabokov

According to the perverse aesthetics of artistic guilty pleasure, certain books and movies are so bad - so crudely conceived, despicably motivated and atrociously executed - that they're actually rather good. — Walter Kirn

Dane discarded his speargun with visible relief. As a paladin of the Church of God Kraken, he had few options. Like many groups devoid of real power and realpolitik, the church was actually constrained by its aesthetics. Its operatives could not have guns, simply, because guns were not squiddy enough.
It was a common moan. Drunk new soldiers of the Cathedral of the Bees might whine: "It's not that I don't think sting-tipped blowpipes aren't cool, it's just ... " "I've gotten rally good with the steam-cudgel," a disaffected Pistonpunk might ask her elders "but wouldn't it be useful to ... ?" Oh for a carbine, devout assassins pined. — China Mieville

Whoever had designed the block of flats had obviously worked to a clear set of priorities. Unfortunately, while cost, size, and low-maintenance had made it to the top of the list, aesthetics, good escape routes, and shelter from gunfire hadn't. — Benedict Jacka

Every artist, writers included, have an ethics and an aesthetics, whether they can formulate them or not. I happen to think that it is good to be able to formulate - it is good to know what you are doing and to be able to talk about it. — Aleksandar Hemon

Aesthetics, ethics, and many good things in humans are contagious. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb