The operation of the imagination in life is more significant than its operation in or in relation to works of art... in life what is important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is important is truth as we see it.
Wallace Stevens
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Is not the training of an artist a training in the due relation of one thing with another, and in the faculty of expressing that relation clearly; and, even more, a training in the faculty of disengaging from self the very essence of self — and passing that essence into other selves by so delicate means that none shall see how it is done, yet be insensibly unified? Is not the artist, of all men, foe and nullifier of partisanship and parochialism, of distortions and extravagance, the discoverer of that jack-o'-lantern — Truth; for, if Truth be not Spiritual Proportion I know not what it is. Truth it seems to me — is no absolute thing, but always relative, the essential symmetry in the varying relationships of life; and the most perfect truth is but the concrete expression of the most penetrating vision. Life seen throughout as a countless show of the finest works of Art; Life shaped, and purged of the irrelevant, the gross, and the extravagant; Life, as it were, spiritually selected — that is Truth; a thing as multiple, and changing, as subtle, and strange, as Life itself, and as little to be bound by dogma. Truth admits but the one rule: No deficiency, and no excess! Disobedient to that rule — nothing attains full vitality. And secretly fettered by that rule is Art, whose business is the creation of vital things.
John Galsworthy
I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. "Reflect" is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.
C. S. Lewis
Truth existed before the world began and will still be persisting until long after the world ends, so therefore "source of truth" really has no bearing on anything. What is important is the discovery of truth and its application. That is, to what purpose is the truth put, to what goals it is used for, the method in which the truth is applied, to what benefit the truth is used, that is, who benefits by its use or its non-use or its being hidden or exposed. Such things as truth, facts, knowledge and discoveries, and techniques, are tools, and they in themselves don't have the ability to create or cause any action, effect or result. It is what people do with them that is important. It's the Being behind the tool. A scalpel can cut your throat or it can repair a body. A hammer can bash somebody's brains out or build a house. Therefore, what's more important is the individual's intention and action with that tool, not the tool itself.
Ronald (born L. Ron Hubbard DeWolfe
You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
James Baldwin
Life is more important than art — quantity is only important in that the amount of activity is greater not the number of works.
Patrick Swift
Stevens, Wallace
Stevenson, Adlai
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