Artifice Quotes

• Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Mean, Giving

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• I adore artifice. I always have.

  Diana Vreeland

  Fashion, Adore

  Diana Vreeland (1997). “D.V.”

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• Well, all rock and roll is based in artifice.

  Billy Corgan

  Rocks, Rock And Roll, Wells

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• Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of the cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony - this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Stress, Holiday, Vacation

  "Cool Memories".

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• If some hole does not possess striking individuality through some gift of nature, it must be given as much as possible artificially, and the artifice must be introduced in so subtle a manner as to make it seem natural.

  A. W. Tillinghast

  Golf, Individuality, Doe

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• Art lies by its own artifice.

  Ovid

  Art, Lying, Deception

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• I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.

  David Bowie

  Loyalty, Integrity, Real

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• Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice.

  Martin Amis

  Shopping, Family And Friends, Novelists

  Martin Amis (2017). “The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016”, p.16, Random House

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• Films are artifice. We're telling stories on film. At the same time, when it works, there is a real tough immediacy and spontaneity to it, and a punch.

  Paul McGann

  Real, Telling Stories, Tough

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• Nature is mighty. Art is mighty. Artifice is weak. For nature is the work of a mightier power than man. Art is the work of man under the guidance and inspiration of a mightier power. Artifice is the work of mere man, in the imbecility of his mimic understanding.

  Augustus William Hare

  Art, Inspiration, Men

  Julius Charles HARE (Archdeacon of Lewes. and HARE (Augustus William)), Augustus William HARE (1847). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers. Third edition. First Series”, p.280

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• Stripping away artifice - it's the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life - but there's nothing bigger than life.

  Robert Duvall

  People, Acting, Bigger Than Life

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• Good writing is deceptive in that it hides its own artifice - it makes it seem easy.

  Michael Arndt

  Writing, Easy, Deceptive

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• I definitely dislike pomposity and artifice. I hope that I'm not that. Once I write a song, it belongs to the world, and the way people perceive it, it's cool.

  Daryl Hall

  Song, Writing, People

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• Being blond is definitely a different state of mind. I can't really put my finger on it, but the artifice of being blond has some incredible sort of sexual connotation.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Mind, Different, Incredibles

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• Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Marriage, Dream, Home

  Samuel Johnson, Peter Martin (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.310, Harvard University Press

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• We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.

  William Hazlitt

  Quality, Use, Good Intentions

  William Hazlitt (1839). “Sketches and Essays”, p.29

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• The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible

  William Blake

  Plato, Writing, Men

  William Blake, W. H. Stevenson (2007). “Blake: The Complete Poems”, p.501, Pearson Education

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• All possible means were used by the infatuated parents to conclude the bargain; and deception put an end to these usual artifices.

  Adelbert von Chamisso

  Mean, Hype, Parent

  Theodor Storm, Adelbert von Chamisso, Adalbert Stifter (2005). “Famous German Novellas of the 19th Century”, p.52, Mondial

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• That sense of a life in natural objects, which in most poetry is but a rhetorical artifice, was, then, in Wordsworth the assertion of what was for him almost literal fact.

  Walter Pater

  Facts, Wordsworth, Natural

  Walter Pater (1901). “The Works of Walter Pater: Essays from 'The Guardian.'”

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• If we bestow but a very little attention to the economy of the animal creation, we shall find manifest examples of premeditation, perseverance, resolution, and consumate artifice, in order to effect their purpose.

  William Bartram

  Perseverance, Animal, Order

  William Bartram (1958). “The Travels of William Bartram”, p.57, University of Georgia Press

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• To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.

  Wallace Stevens

  Life, Thinking, Imagination

  Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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• History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy

  Robert Smithson

  Museums, Vacancy, May

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

  James Joyce

  Writing, Fantastic, Revolt

  James Joyce, Kevin Barry, Conor Deane (2000). “Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing”, p.59, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Missionary Priests have over them.

  William Shirley

  Way, Weakness, Missionary

  William Shirley, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (1973). “Correspondence of William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts and military commander in America, 1731-1760”

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• I don't see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way - artistically.

  Lady Gaga

  Real, Way, Living My Life

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