E. M. Forster Art Quotations

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.

A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned.

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.

History develops, art stands still.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.