Quotessence
Home / Authors / Herbert Read
Herbert Read

Herbert Read Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllLiteratureArtFormModernIndividualMenIfsArt IsArtistFeelings

Famous Herbert Read Quotes

“The distinction between art and illusion is a distinction between a lost experience that has been recovered and made a part of the present reality, and a lost experience that remains unconscious because it is screened in cliches and ready-made conventions of morality. Someone has said that art is the invention of new cliches. It would be more to the point to define true education as the prevention of cliche formation-which is what I mean by education through art.”

ArtEducation
Book:To Hell With Culture
Create image

“Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines. Only such people will so contrive and control those machines that their products are an enhancement of biological needs, and not a denial of them.”

PeopleNeedsScienceNatureNaturalProductsMachinesDenialServingTrustedApprenticeshipEnhancement
Book:The Grass Roots of Art: Lectures on the Social Aspects of Art in an Industrial Age
Create image

“Intellect begins with the observation of nature, proceeds to memorize and classify the facts thus observed, and by logical deduction builds up that edifice of knowledge properly called science But admittedly we also know by feeling, and we can combine the two faculties, and present knowledge in the guise of art.”

KnowsArtTwoFactsFeelingsIntellectObservationLogicalFacultyGuiseDeductionsEdifice
Book:Selected writings: poetry and criticism
Create image

“Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.”

GivingHumansHas BeensArtFeelingsFormValuesSocialMoralMoralityArt IsIdealsAimSignificantObjectivesAestheticNever ChangeSubordinatesGood ArtHuman ValuesMoral ValuesObjective TruthSocial Values
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“Sensibility... is a direct and particular reaction to the separate and individual nature of things. It begins and ends with the sensuous apprehension of colour, texture and formal relations; and if we strive to organize these elements, it is not with the idea of increasing the knowledge of the mind, but rather in order to intensify the pleasure of the senses.”

IfsMindIdeasEndsOrderIndividualPleasureParticularElementsDirectRelationStriveSensesReactionsColourSensibilityOrganizeFormalTextureApprehensionSensuous
Book:Selected writings: poetry and criticism
Create image

“The peculiarity of sculpture is that it creates a three-dimensional object in space. Painting may strive to give on a two-dimensional plane, the illusion of space, but it is space itself as a perceived quantity that becomes the peculiar concern of the sculptor. We may say that for the painter space is a luxury; for the sculptor it is a necessity.”

GivingMayTwoThreeSpaceObjectsPaintingIllusionConcernStrivePainterLuxuryPlanesPeculiarQuantitySculptureSculptors
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“The classicist, and the naturalist who has much in common with him, refuse to see in the highest works of art anything but the exercise of judgement, sensibility, and skill. The romanticist cannot be satisfied with such a normal standard; for him art is essentially irrational - an experience beyond normality, sometimes destructive of normality, and at the very least evocative of that state of wonder which is the state of mind induced by the immediately inexplicable.”

MindArtSometimesStatesCommonWonderExerciseSkillsNormalHighestStandardsArt IsRefuseSatisfiedJudgementDestructiveWorks Of ArtState Of MindSensibilityIrrationalInexplicableNormalityNaturalistClassicistsState Of Wonder
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man - the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings... The value of words help to define the feeling itself... The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.”

MenHelpingFeelingsValuesMemoriesAbilityCommonPrivilegeDetermineGrantedPhrasesExceptionalHabitual
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“Poetry is creative expression; Prose is constructive expression... by creative I mean original. In Poetry the words are born or reborn in the act of thinking... There is no time interval between the words and the thought when a real poet writes, both of them happen together, and both the thought and the word are Poetry.”

ThinkingWritingMeanRealHappensTogetherBornCreativePoetExpressionOriginalsProsePoetry IsConstructiveIntervalsRebornCreative Expression
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular schemes of any sorts.He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom and irresponsibility (implied by the unfortunate term free verse) he seeks a stricter discipline of exact concord of thought and feeling.”

FeelingsTermProgressModernPoetDisciplineEssentialsSeekingMoodRhythmVersesReservesSchemesUnfortunateAlliancesThoughts And FeelingsImpliedIrresponsibilityFree Verse
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“Art is always the index of social vitality, the moving finger that records the destiny of a civilization. A wise statesman should keep an anxious eye on this graph, for it is more significant than a decline in exports or a fall in the value of a nation's currency.”

ShouldArtEyeMovingValuesFallNationsSocialDestinyRecordsWiseCivilizationArt IsFingersSignificantAnxiousDeclineCurrencyVitalityStatesmenGraphs
Book:To Hell with Culture: And Other Essays on Art and Society
Create image

“An entertainment is something which distracts us or diverts us from the routine of daily life. It makes us for the time being forget our cares and worries; it interrupts our conscious thoughts and habits, rests our nerves and minds, though it may incidentally exhaust our bodies. Art, on the other hand, though it may divert us from the normal routine of our existence, causes us in some way or other to become conscious of that existence.”

WayMindMayArtBodyHandsCareCultureCausesForgetExistenceWorryHabitNormalConsciousEntertainmentDaily LifeNervesRoutinePopular CultureBody Art
Book:The Politics of the Unpolitical
Create image

“Fantasy is a product of thought, Imagination of sensibility. If the thinking, discursive mind turns to speculation, the result isFantasy; if, however, the sensitive, intuitive mind turns to speculation, the result is Imagination. Fantasy may be visionary, but it is cold and logical. Imagination is sensuous and instinctive. Both have form, but the form of Fantasy is analogous to Exposition, that of Imagination to Narrative.”

IfsThinkingMindMayFormTurnsImaginationResultsFantasyProductsColdNarrativeSensitiveLogicalSensibilitySpeculationIntuitiveVisionariesSensuous
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“This is the essential distinction--even opposition--between the painting and the film: the painting is composed subjectively, thefilm objectively. However highly we rate the function of the scenario writer--in actual practice it is rated very low--we must recognize that the film is not transposed directly and freely from the mind by means of a docile medium like paint, but must be cut piece-meal out of the lumbering material of the actual visible world.”

WorldMindMeanFilmPracticePiecesCuttingPaintingMaterialsEssentialsLowsFunctionPaintRateMediumsCinemaMealsVisibleDistinctionOppositionScenariosDocile
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because "it leaves everything to the imagination." The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.”

KnowsArtLiteratureFeltImaginationEmotionEffectsAmountIntentionHarmEnormousConsumersJustificationVaguePornographyErotic
Book:To Hell With Culture
Create image

“In a sense, every tool is a machine--the hammer, the ax, and the chisel. And every machine is a tool. The real distinction is between one man using a tool with his hands and producing an object that shows at every stage the direction of his will and the impression of his personality; and a machine which is producing, without the intervention of a particular man, objects of a uniformity and precision that show no individual variation and have no personal charm. The problem is to decide whether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art.”

MenArtRealShowsProblemHandsIndividualQualityStageObjectsParticularPersonalityEssentialsToolsMachinesProductionsImpressionCharmDistinctionOne ManInterventionHammersVariationPrecisionUniformityChisels
Author:Herbert Read
Create image

“The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.”

ArtistCultureLiteratureIndividualTermWealthQualityMilitaryPoetMaterialsCivilizationAchievementPhilosopherProsperityRepresentativesMilitary PowerMaterial Wealth
Book:Selected writings: poetry and criticism
Create image